American Literature

... Read 10 Days That Unexpectedly Changed America Summary

12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos (2018) is Jordan B. Peterson’s second book. Peterson’s self-help book seeks to provide practical and virtuous rules to live by for a wide audience and general readership. The book streamlines, simplifies, and reimagines some of the more traditionally academic topics of Peterson’s first book, Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief. Each non-fiction work aims to explain human history and human nature according to universal frameworks. 12... Read 12 Rules for Life Summary

Published in 2005, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus was written by Charles C. Mann. A companion work, 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created, was released in 2011. The first chapter introduces many of the problems and inadequacies surrounding popular accounts of native societies. The author describes the tendency to minimize the cultures that existed prior to the arrival of Europeans. Native cultures are seen as simpler and less sophisticated than contemporary... Read 1491 Summary

... Read 28 Summers Summary

... Read A Brave And Startling Truth Summary

William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! (1936) is one of the many texts in Faulkner’s oeuvre that is set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi. Faulkner is considered one of the greatest writers of the 20th century, a designation earned due to his innovative and stylistic modernist techniques, which he uses to investigate the history and identity of the American South. Faulkner, who grew up in Mississippi and spent the majority of his life there, was deeply... Read Absalom, Absalom Summary

... Read Absolutely Normal Chaos Summary

... Read A Carafe, that is a Blind Glass Summary

Originally published in Mademoiselle magazine in December 1956, “A Christmas Memory” remains one of Truman Capote’s (1924-1984) most anthologized short stories. A midcentury author with a clear and evocative prose style, Capote is remembered for his novella Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1958) and for his groundbreaking work of true-crime nonfiction, In Cold Blood (1966). Other works by this author include The Grass Harp (1951), Children on Their Birthdays (1948), and Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948).“A Christmas... Read A Christmas Memory Summary

Ernest Hemingway’s short story “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” was first published in Scribner’s Magazine in March of 1933. It was then anthologized in Hemingway’s 1933 short story collection Winner Takes Nothing. It is regarded as one of his most important and influential short stories and as a clear example of his “Iceberg Theory” and his focus on typical Modernist existential themes. Utilizing the Iceberg Theory, Hemingway allows most of the story to sit below the... Read A Clean, Well-Lighted Place Summary

John Kennedy Toole’s novel A Confederacy of Dunces was written in the 1960s but only published years after the author’s death. It depicts the adventures of Ignatius J. Reilly, an academic but lazy man who, at age 30, lives with his mother in New Orleans in the early 1960s. Forced to find a job, he encounters a string of colorful characters endemic to the city of the time.The novel begins outside the D. H. Holmes... Read A Confederacy of Dunces Summary

A writer sits next to her elderly, ailing father, who asks her to “write a simple story just once more […] the kind de Maupassant wrote, or Chekhov” (Paragraph 2). Wanting to please her father, the writer agrees, although she privately feels uncomfortable telling stories with a definite beginning and end: “Everyone, real or invented, deserves the open destiny of life” (Paragraph 3).The writer jots down a one-paragraph story about a woman who begins doing... Read A Conversation with My Father Summary

Hattie Owen’s life changes the summer she turns 12 and meets the young uncle she never knew existed in Ann M. Martin’s middle-grade novel, A Corner of the Universe (2002). Uncle Adam has been kept a secret because of his mental problems. Adults have trouble handling his emotional extremes, but shy Hattie finds a true friend in her exuberant uncle. Adam teaches Hattie to explore life beyond the safety of her front porch. As Hattie... Read A Corner of the Universe Summary

... Read A Dark Brown Dog Summary

... Read A Dream Within a Dream Summary

Among Peter Meinke’s most anthologized poems, “Advice to My Son” is best known for its humorous, ironic tone and contemporary interpretation of traditional rhyme structure. First published in 1964 in The Antioch Review, the poem was anthologized in the volume Liquid Paper: New and Selected Poems (1991), published by the Pittsburgh Press. According to Meinke, he had little idea that the poem would so deeply resonate with readers when he first wrote it as a... Read Advice to My Son Summary

... Read A Fable Summary

A Farewell to Arms, written by Ernest Hemingway and published in 1929, is the story of Frederic Henry, an officer with the Italian army in World War I, and his relationship with Catherine Barkley, a British nurse. Some have noted the similarities between the main character and Hemingway, who also served in the Italian army as an ambulance driver in 1918, and his nurse, Agnes Von Kurowsky, who cared for Hemingway after he was wounded.The... Read A Farewell to Arms Summary

... Read A Following Summary

“Africa Kills Her Sun” is a satirical short story by Nigerian author Ken Saro-Wiwa. Published in 1989 in the anthology Adaku and Other Stories, “Africa Kills Her Sun” takes the form of a letter, written in first-person present tense by the main character, Bana. Bana recounts his adult life—his career change, crimes, and remaining moments before execution—to his childhood girlfriend, Zole, whom he has not seen or spoken to in 10 years.Bana begins the letter... Read Africa Kills Her Sun Summary