"The canonical American masterpiece of sin, guilt, and revenge, in an authoritative new edition from Penguin Classics with a foreword by Tom Perrotta. At once retrospective and radically new, [this book] portrays seventeenth-century Puritan New England, a time period irreversibly encoded in the American identity. Hawthorne built one of the most incisive and devastating human dramas ever written out of a community and its outcasts: Hester Prynne...

Appearing in 1855, [this book] is the second biography written by Fredrick Douglass (1818-95), a man who was born into slavery in Maryland and who went on to become the most famous antislavery author, orator, philosopher, essayist, historian, intellectual, statesman, and freedom-fighter in U.S. history. An instant bestseller, Douglass's autobiography tells the story of his early life as lived in 'bondage' and of his later life as lived in 'freedom'...

Born a slave in Virginia in 1856, Booker T. Washington rose in prominence to become black America's foremost spokesman. This is the dramatic autobiographical account of Washington's struggle to succeed and prosper in a country that refused to acknowledge his existence. From his fight for an education to his founding of the world-renowned Tuskegee Institute, Up From Slavery is one of the most significant and defining works in American literature. A...

This amply annotated edition of Wharton's 1911 classic novella includes textual notes and documents, including Wharton's preface, letters, reviews, and early short story, "Mrs. Manstey's View." It is accompanied by the editor's comprehensive introduction and a wide array of readings on topics central to the novella: tragedy, health and fitness, sex and marriage, and turn-of-the-century New England poverty and isolation. Of her twenty-five novels and...

The renowned psychologist and philosopher argues that individual religious experiences, rather than the tenets of organized religions, form the backbone of religious life; discussing conversion, repentance, mysticism, and hope of reward and fears of punishment in the hereafter, as well as his observations on the religious experiences of such diverse thinkers as Voltaire, Emerson, and Luther.

Written in 1791 and 1792 this two-part declaration, Rights of Man, was in response to Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France. Part One argued for political independence and social reform. This seminal work on freedom and equality, written by Thomas Paine, one of the most influential writers and reformers of his age, is considered to be a classic statement of faith in democracy and egalitarianism and is Paine's most widely read work....

Young Henry Fleming had always dreamt of performing heroic deeds in battle. But as a raw recruit in the American Civil War, the reality if one of mental and physical torment. Throughout his first ordeal in action, Henry experiences both fear and self-doubt, and has no idea whether war will make him a coward - or a hero.

"The landmark comic satire that asks, "What would happen if all black people in America turned white?" It's New Year's Day 1933 in New York City, and Max Disher, a young black man, has just found out that a certain Dr. Junius Crookman has discovered a mysterious process that allows people to bleach their skin white--a new way to "solve the American race problem." Max leaps at the opportunity, and after a brief stay at the Crookman Sanitarium, he becomes...

A depiction of a utopian community that can not survive the individual passions of its members.

One of the most influential authors of the late nineteenth century, and a former editor of the Atlantic Monthly and Harper's Magazine, William Dean Howells wrote more than fifty novels, as well as plays, memoirs, and poetry collections. Opposed to the sentimentalism, contrived heroism, and theatrical endings in fiction, he developed a literary style based on unvarnished realism. This unique genre is brilliantly depicted in A Modern Instance, a novel...