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The Most Dangerous Book: The Battle for James Joyce's Ulysses
Kevin Birmingham · back to the book
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorThe Zhivago Affair: The Kremlin, the CIA, and the Battle Over a Forbidden Book
Peter Finn, Petra Couvee
When Books Went to War: The Stories that Helped Us Win World War II
Molly Guptill Manning · 288 pages
"When America entered World War II in 1941, [it] faced an enemy that had banned and burned over 100 million books and caused fearful citizens to hide or destroy many more. Outraged librarians launched a campaign to send free books to American troops and gathered 20 million hardcover donations. In 1943, the War Department and the publishing industry stepped in with an extraordinary program: 120 mil
A Room of One's Own
Virginia Woolf · 129 pages
A Room of One's Own is an extended essay by Virginia Woolf. First published on 24 October 1929, the essay was based on a series of lectures she delivered at Newnham College and Girton College, two women's colleges at Cambridge University in October 1928. While this extended essay in fact employs a fictional narrator and narrative to explore women both as writers of and characters in fiction, the m
Library: An Unquiet History
Matthew Battles · 258 pages
On the survival and destruction of knowledge, from Alexandria to the Internet. Through the ages, libraries have not only accumulated and preserved but also shaped, inspired, and obliterated knowledge.Matthew Battles, a rare books librarian and a gifted narrator, takes us on a spirited foray from Boston to Baghdad, from classical scriptoria to medieval monasteries, from the Vatican to the british L
Why Orwell Matters
Christopher Hitchens · 224 pages
Reading Lolita in Tehran
Azar Nafisi · 368 pages
Every Thursday morning for two years in the Islamic Republic of Iran, Azar Nafisi, a bold and inspired teacher, secretly gathered seven of her most committed female students to read forbidden Western classics. Some came from conservative and religious families, others were progressive and secular; some had spent time in jail. They were shy and uncomfortable at first, unaccustomed to being asked to
The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How it Changed America
David Hajdu · 456 pages
An informal and personal description of the rise and fall of comic books in the '40s and '50s, with a focus on the Educational Comics (E.C.) company run by Gains, father then son (M.C. then William). The fall came in two steps, the first in the '40s and aimed at crime comics, and the second in the '50s and aimed at almost all comics, but with emphasis on horror comics.
Hope Against Hope
Nadezhda Mandelstam · 431 pages
The story of the poet Osip Mandelstam, who suffered continuous persecution under Stalin, but whose wife constantly supported both him and his writings until he died in 1938. Since 1917 The Modern Library prides itself as The Modern Library of the World’s Best Books. Featuring introductions by leading writers, stunning translations, scholarly endnotes and reading group guides. Production values emp
Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith and Love
Dava Sobel · 420 pages
A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and LoveInspired by her long fascination with Galileo, and by the remarkable surviving letters of his daughter, which she has translated into English for the first time, Dava Sobel has written a book of great originality and power, a biography unlike any ever written on the man Albert Einstein called “the father of modern physics – indeed of modern science al
Eminent Outlaws: The Gay Writers Who Changed America
Christopher Bram · 372 pages
Describes how the trailblazing, post-war gay literary figures, including Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, Truman Capote, and Allen Ginsberg, paved the way for newer generations, including Armistead Maupin, Edmund White, and Edward Albee.
Careless People: Murder, Mayhem, and the Invention of The Great Gatsby
Sarah Churchwell · 432 pages
" Tracing the genesis of a masterpiece, a Fitzgerald scholar follows the novelist as he begins work on The Great Gatsby. The autumn of 1922 found F. Scott Fitzgerald at the height of his fame, days from turning twenty-six years old, and returning to New York for the publication of his fourth book, Tales of the Jazz Age. A spokesman for America's carefree younger generation, Fitzgerald found a home
A Universal History of the Destruction of Books: From Ancient Sumer to Modern-Day Iraq
Fernando Baez · 354 pages
A product of 10 years' research and support from leading American and European universities, A Universal History of the Destruction of Books traces the tragic story which encapsulates: the smashed tablets of ancient Sumer; the widespread looting of libraries in post-war Iraq; the levelling of the Library of Alexandria; the burning of books by Crusaders and Nazis; and censorship against authors. Wi
A Hobbit, a Wardrobe, and a Great War: How J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis Rediscovered Faith, Friendship, and Heroism in the Cataclysm of 1914-18
Joseph Loconte · 235 pages
"The untold story of how the First World War shaped the lives, faith, and writings of J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis"--Amazon.com.
Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956
Anne Applebaum · 613 pages
In the follow-up to her previous book "Gulag," the author, a journalist delivers a history of how Communism took over Eastern Europe after World War II and transformed in frightening fashion the individuals who came under its sway. At the end of World War II, the Soviet Union, to its surprise and delight, found itself in control of a huge swath of territory in Eastern Europe. Josef Stalin and his
The Lady and Her Monsters
Roseanne Montillo · 322 pages
"A ... blend of literary history, lore, and early scientific exploration that traces the origins of the greatest horror story of all time"--Dust jacket flap. Motillo brings to life the fascinating times, startling science, and real-life horrors behind Mary Shelley's gothic masterpiece, Frankenstein.
Step Across This Line: Collected Nonfiction 1992-2002
Salman Rushdie · 402 pages
From one of the great novelists of our day, a vital, brilliant new book of essays, speeches and articles essential for our times. Step Across This Line showcases the other side of one of fiction's most astonishing conjurors. On display is Salman Rushdie's incisive, thoughtful and generous mind, in prose that is as entertaining as it is topical. The world is here, captured in pieces on a dazzling a
The Banquet Years: The Origins of the Avant-Garde in France, 1885 to World War I
Roger Shattuck · 397 pages
The modernism of our times explained through a study of four significant men.
The Complete Persepolis
Marjane Satrapi · 352 pages
From inside front cover: The story of Satrapi's unforgettable childhood and coming of age within a ... loving family in Tehran during the Islamic Revolution; of the contradictions between private and public life in a coutnry plagued by political upheaval; of her high school years in Vienna facing the trails of adolescence far from her family; of her homecoming -- both sweet and terrible; and, fina
Jane's Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World
Claire Harman · 341 pages
Part biography and part cultural history, this splendid book not only tells the captivating story of Jane Austen's life, but also her literary legacy. The slow growth of Austen's fame, the changing status of her work, and what it has stood for in English culture is a story of personal struggle and family dynamics as well as a history of critical practices and changing public tastes. Jane's Fame is
Sor Juana: Or, the Traps of Faith
Octavio Paz · 560 pages
The History of the Hobbit, Part One: Mr. Baggins
John D. Rateliff, J.R.R. Tolkien · 512 pages
The Beautiful Cigar Girl: Mary Rogers, Edgar Allan Poe, and the Invention of Murder
Daniel Stashower · 331 pages
On July 28, 1841, the body of Mary Rogers, a twenty-year-old cigar girl, was found floating in the Hudson-and New York's unregulated police force proved incapable of solving the crime. One year later, a struggling writer named Edgar Allan Poe decided to take on the case-and sent his fictional detective, C. Auguste Dupin, to solve the baffling murder of Mary Rogers in "The Mystery of Marie Rogt."