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Interwoven with accounts of Thoreau's daily life (he did not live as a recluse but received visitors and almost daily walked into Concord) are meditations on human existence, society, government and other topics, expressed with clear-headed wisdom and remarkable beauty of style.
2) Walden
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"In honor of the bicentennial of Henry David Thoreau's birth, this edition of Walden features an introduction and annotations by renowned environmentalist Bill McKibben. 'We need to understand that when Thoreau sat in the dooryard of his cabin 'from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sang around or flitted noiseless through the house,' he was offering counsel and example exactly suited for our...
3) Roughing it
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Mark Twain's ramblings took him all over the American West during the 1860s. He prospected for gold and silver, speculated on timber and mining stocks, sailed to Hawaii, and worked for a succession of small newspapers. This is his fictionalized account of these years, tall tales abound, as do sketches of the unforgettable characters he encountered.
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'I hate to be thought men's property in that way'. Independent and spirited Bathsheba Everdene has come to Weatherbury to take up her position as a farmer on the largest estate in the area. Her confident presence draws three very different suitors: the gentleman-farmer Boldwood, the soldier-seducer Sergeant Troy and the devoted shepherd Gabriel Oak. Each, in contrasting ways, unsettles her decisions and complicates her life, and when tragedy ensues,...
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An account of Twain's experiences as an apprentice riverboat pilot in the days of the great Mississippi steamboats.
Both a memoir and a travel book, Mark Twain recalls his days as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River before the American Civil War, and then many years after, recounts a trip as passenger along the Mississippi River from St. Louis to New Orleans. The book begins with a brief history of the river as reported by Europeans and Americans,...
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Inspired by transcendentalism, Whitman's immortal collection includes some of the greatest poems of modern times, including his masterpiece, "Song of Myself." Shattering standard conventions, it stands as an unabashed celebration of body and nature. "The most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed."--Ralph Waldo Emerson. Walt Whitman was a poetic Visionary. He published the first edition of this monumental work in 1855...
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"One of the great masterpieces of James's late period--and the author's own favorite among his works. EVERYMAN'S LIBRARY. First published in 1903, The Ambassadors follows the middle-aged Lambert Strether, dispatched from Massachusetts to Paris by his wealthy fiancee to "rescue" her son Chad from the corrupting influences of Europe and its wicked women. Once Strether arrives in Paris, however, Chad introduces him to a world that he finds refined and...
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American icon BENJAMIN FRANKLIN (1706-1790), born in Massachusetts to a British immigrant father and colonial mother, published the famous Poor Richards' Almanack, helped found the University of Pennsylvania, and was the first Postmaster General of the United States. His likeness adorns, among other things, the United States' hundred-dollar bill. Benjamin Franklin was as wildly intriguing a personality as his legend suggest, and as you've always heard,...
10) Hard times
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"Thomas Gradgrind is the guiding luminary of the Coketown school, stern proponent of the Philosophy of Fact, whose ill-conceived idealism blinds him to the essential humanity of those around, with calamitous results. His daughter Louisa becomes trapped in a loveless marriage and falls prey to an idle seducer, and her brother Tom is ruined thanks to their father's pet theories. Meanwhile Sleary's circus offers a vision of escape and entertainment,...
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"Wuthering Heights is one of the most famous love stories in the English language. It is also one of the most potent revenge narratives. The intense and unbreakable bond between the fiery Catherine Earnshaw and the foundling Heathcliff has startled and fascinated readers since its first publication in 1847. Of uncertain parentage and ethnicity, Heathcliff comes to Wuthering Heights as a child when Catherine's father finds him wandering alone through...
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Tempestuous Eustacia Vye passes her days dreaming of passionate love and the escape it may bring from the small community of Egdon Heath. Hearing that Clym Yeobright is to return from Paris, she sets her heart on marrying him, believing that through him she can leave rural life and find fulfilment elsewhere. But she is to be disappointed, for Clym has dreams of his own, and they have little in common with Eustacia's. Their unhappy marriage causes...
14) So big
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Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and widely considered to be Edna Ferber's greatest achievement, So Big is a classic novel of turn-of-the-century Chicago. It is the unforgettable story of Selina Peake Dejong, a gambler's daughter, and her stuggles to stay afloat and maintain her dignity and her sanity in the face of marrige, widowhood, and single parenthood. A brilliant literary masterwork from one of the twentieth century's most accomplished and admired...
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"On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below." With this celebrated sentence, Thornton Wilder begins The Bridge of San Luis Rey, one of the towering achievements in American fiction and a novel read throughout the world. By chance, a monk witnesses the tragedy. Brother Juniper seeks to prove that it was divine intervention rather than chance that led to the deaths...
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Relates the story of Norwegian pioneers who make the long trek from a fishing village in Norway through Canada to Spring Creek, in Dakota Territory in the latter part of the 19th century. For Per Hansa's wife Beret, the difficulties become unbearable. This "saga of the prairie" deals with timeless themes of immigration, fear and loneliness, myth, and religion.
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Sherlock Holmes and the faithful Dr. Watson are featured here in a series of twelve of their earliest cases. They include A Scandal in Bohemia where, uniquely, Holmes is outwitted - by a beautiful woman; The Red-Headed League, which begins with a bizarre newspaper advertisement for red-haired men; and The Adventure of the Speckled Band, in which the great detective traces a sinister whistling sound to its lethal source. First published month by month...
18) Brave New World
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Appears on these lists
Dedham's SciFi
Framingham - Banned Books
Framingham 2024 Reading Bingo Suggestions
STO: Banned & Challenged Books
Framingham - Banned Books
Framingham 2024 Reading Bingo Suggestions
STO: Banned & Challenged Books
Description
Towering classic of dystopian satire, BRAVE NEW WORLD is a brilliant and terrifying vision of a soulless society--and of one man who discovers the human costs of mindless conformity. Hundreds of years in the future, the World Controllers have created an ideal civilization. Its members, shaped by genetic engineering and behavioral conditioning, are productive and content in roles they have been assigned at conception. Government-sanctioned drugs and...
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Meet George Marvin Brush--Don Quixote come to Main Street in the Great Depression, and one of Thornton Wilder's most memorable characters. George Brush, a traveling textbook salesman, is a fervent religious convert who is determined to lead a good life. With sad and sometimes hilarious consequences, his travels take him through smoking cars, bawdy houses, banks, and campgrounds from Texas to Illinois--and into the soul of America itself. -- Provided...
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