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In this scathing book, the author produced a landmark study of affluent American society that exposes, with brilliant ruthlessness, the habits of production and waste that link invidious business tactics and barbaric social behavior. Veblen's analysis of the evolutionary process sees greed as the overriding motive in the modern economy, and with an impartial gaze he examines the human cost paid when social institutions exploit the consumption of unessential...
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One of the supreme masterpieces of Romantic fiction and Scottish literature, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner is a terrifying tale of murder and amorality, and of one man's descent into madness and despair. James Hogg's sardonic novel follows a young man who, falling under the spell of a mysterious stranger who bears an uncanny likeness to himself, embarks on a career as a serial murderer. The memoirs are presented by a narrator...
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An enchanting tale of romance, scandal, and intrigue in the gossipy English town of Hollingford around the 1830s, Wives and Daughters tells the story of Molly Gibson, the seventeen-year-old daughter of a widowed country doctor. When her father remarries, she forms a close friendship with her new stepsister, the beautiful and worldly Cynthia, until they become love rivals for the affections of Squire Hamley's sons, Osbourne and Roger. When sudden illness...
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Rudolf Rassendyll is abruptly transported from his comfortable life in London to fast-moving adventures in Ruritania, a land steeped in political intrigue. Rassendyll bears a striking resemblance to Rudolph Elphberg, who is about to be crowned King of Ruritania. When the rival to the throne, Black Michael of Streslau, attempts to seize power by imprisoning Elphberg in the Castle of Zenda, Rassendyll is obliged to impersonate the King to uphold the...
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"'The Divine Comedy' begins in a shadowed forest on Good Friday in the year 1300. It proceeds on a journey that, in its intense recreation of the depths and the heights of human experience, has become the key with which Western civilization has sought to unlock the mystery of its own identity. Allen Mandelbaum's astonishingly Dantean translation, which captures so much of the life of the original, renders whole for us the masterpiece that genius whom...
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The Metamorphosis and Other Stories, by Franz Kafka, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
• New introductions commissioned from todays top writers and scholars
• Biographies of the authors
•...
9) On war
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On War is the most significant attempt in Western history to understand war, both in its internal dynamics and as an instrument of policy. Since the work's first appearance in 1832, it has been read throughout the world, and has stimulated generations of soldiers, statesmen, and intellectuals. The most significant attempt in Western history to understand war, both in its internal dynamics and as an instrument of policy, Carl von Clausewitz's book...
10) The Forsyte saga
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Chronicles the lives of a middle-class family whose values are constantly at war with its passions and love affairs.
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Troilus and Criseyde (c.1385) is an epic poem written by English poet Geoffrey Chaucer. Composed in Middle English, Troilus and Criseyde is the story of two lovers forced apart by the Greek siege of Troy. Often considered Chaucer's finest work for its structural consistency and completeness, the poem adapts Homer's Iliad and other ancient sources which expand on its tradition to tell a Christian moral tale about the importance of faith and the sacred...
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In this powerful portrait of the self-making of an artist, Willa Cather created one of her most extraordinary heroines. Thea Kronborg, a minister's daughter in a provincial Colorado town, seems destined from childhood for a place in the wider world. But as her path to the world stage leads her ever farther from the humble town she can't forget and from the man she can't afford to love, Thea learns that her exceptional musical talent and fierce ambition...
15) Ulysses
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The unique Dublin Illustrated Edition, endorsed by The James Joyce Centre, meticulously recreates the 1922 text. Ulysses chronicles the passage of Leopold Bloom through Dublin during an ordinary day, 16 June 1904. Ulysses' stream-of-consciousness technique, careful structuring, and experimental prose -- full of puns, parodies, and allusions, as well as its rich characterisations and broad humour -- made the book a highly regarded novel in the Modernist...
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"Written in 1915, The Shadow-Line is based upon events and experiences from twenty-seven years earlier to which Conrad returned obsessively in his fiction. A young sea-captain's first command brings with it a succession of crises: his sea is becalmed, the crew laid low by fever, and his deranged first mate is convinced that the ship is haunted by the malignant spirit of a previous captain. This is indeed a work full of 'sudden passion', in which Conrad...
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A portrait is a key example of the Keunstlerroman (an Artist's Buldungsroman) in English literature. Joyce's novel trace the intellectual and religio-philosophical awakening of young Stephen Dedalus as he begins to question and rebel against the Catholic and Irish conventions in which he has been raise.
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"Published in 1859, we are immediately intrigued by the narrative - a young and genial tutor of arts, Walter Hartright, encounters a woman dressed head to toe in white who is lost in the streets of London. After reporting her to the authorities Walter is informed that the lady was an escapee from a mental asylum. However, when Walter takes a new position in teaching art he encounters a girl named Laura, whose looks are stunningly similar to those...
20) The jungle books
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Mowgli, lost in the deep jungle as a child, is adopted into a family of wolves. Hunted by Shere Khan, the Bengal tiger, Mowgli is allowed to run with the wolf pack under the protection of Bagheera, the black panther, and Baloo, the brown bear who teaches wolf cubs the Laws of the Jungle. Through his many adventures, Mowgli evolves from a vengeful member of the pack to a just and compassionate human being who at last returns to join perhaps to lead...