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Set in the aftermath of the Serbo-Bulgarian War of 1885, Arms and the Man challenges romantic ideas about war and love. Captain Bluntschli, a fleeing soldier, climbs through a Bulgarian lady's bedroom window, triggering a series of events that...

Though the precise origins of Aristotle's Poetics are not known, researchers believe that the work was composed around 330 BCE and was preserved primarily through Aristotle's students' notes. Despite its vague beginning, the Poetics has been a...

Are you there God? It's Me, Margaret, one of Judy Blume's most successful young adult novels, was published in 1970. The book appeared only shortly after Blume began her literary career, while her young children were still in preschool. Are you...

The specific circumstances surrounding the origin of Greek drama were a puzzle even in the 4th century BC. Greek drama seems to have its roots in religious celebrations that incorporated song and dance. By the 6th century BC, Athenians had...

Anthem is one of Ayn Rand's earlier works, and presages the fears of collectivism that characterize Objectivism and her later work, such as The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. The novel is set in the future and has a universal, timeless feel in...

Horror fans will be disappointed to learn that there are no spectral figures commonly identified as ghosts in Henrik Ibsen’s groundbreaking stage drama Ghosts. The “ghosts” of the title are metaphorical, referring to outdated traditions and the...

The Hate U Give (2018) is George Tillman Jr.'s film based on the book The Hate U Give, by Angie Thomas. Directed and produced by Tillman, the film was written by Audrey Wells, shot by Mihai Mălaimare Jr., and stars Amandla Stenberg as Starr,...

She's the Man is a romantic comedy film released in 2006 and starring Amanda Bynes and Channing Tatum. Its story was inspired by Shakespeare's comedy Twelfth Night, and it takes many direct cues from this classical work. Director Andy Fickman...

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is a silent horror film that was directed by Robert Wiene in 1920 and was distributed by Decla-Bioscop in the Weimar Republic, Germany. The film stars Werner Krauss as the titular Dr. Caligari, a psychologically...

"The Snowflake Which is Now and Hence Forever" by Archibald MacLeish was written later in MacLeish's life, and was, in some ways, an answer to the philosophical, poetic and existential questions he had been posing for years in his other work....

The 400 Blows is the debut film of French director Francois Truffaut. The film was released in 1959 in France and was an unexpected success. The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and at the Cannes Film Festival...

Billy Wilder's The Apartment is one of the most iconic Hollywood comedies of all-time. Released in 1960, it came only a year after the huge success of Wilder's Some Like it Hot. Because Some Like It Hot had done so well with critics and audiences,...

Get Out is a satirical horror film written and directed by Jordan Peele. Prior to making Get Out, Peele was best known as a comedian, and half of the sketch duo Key & Peele, beloved for entertaining and sharp satirical sketches on Comedy...

Memento is a psychological thriller directed by Christopher Nolan, written by his brother, Jonathan Nolan, and produced by Suzanne and Jennifer Todd. It was released on September 5, 2000.

Leonard Shelby, the protagonist, is in search of the person...

William Langland wrote the poem Piers Plowman over the course of about twenty years in the Late Middle Ages, completing the earliest version in the mid-1360s, and longer revised versions in the late 1370s and mid-1380s. Fifty-two early manuscripts...

Anne Bradstreet's work is renowned for her technical accomplishment, her deep engagement with religious faith and doubt, her personal insights on life in the New World in the 17th century, and her ruminations on a woman's role in a patriarchal...

Catching Fire is the second book in Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games Trilogy, published by Scholastic Press in 2009 between The Hunger Games and Mockingjay. The novel begins a few months after protagonist Katniss Everdeen and her counterpart, Peeta...

Many critics describe Blood Meridian as one of the most important novels of the 20th century. It is a revisionist Western in which McCarthy explores the era after the Mexican-American War. During this time, vigilante, mercenary gangs patrolled the...

Malcolm Gladwell's 2005 non-fiction book Blink is about how people use their adaptive unconscious – the part of the brain that operates rapidly based upon little information – to make important decisions. Gladwell considers how and why some people...

After retiring from teaching writing at a variety of New York City high schools, Frank McCourt was determined to write about his early life in Ireland before coming to America. The result, Angela's Ashes, was published in 1996 by Scribner and sold...

Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business is a book of media ecology written by educator and media theorist Neil Postman. It has remained both popular and in-print since it was first published in 1986. The book...

Gennifer Albin's second novel, Altered, explores one girl's experience navigating the dysfunctional social and political systems of a completely controlled dystopian society. Published in 2013, Altered is the second book in the Crewel World...

All the Light We Cannot See was written by Anthony Doerr in 2014 and was published by Scribner. All the Light We Cannot See was Doerr's fifth novel.

The inspiration for the novel came when Doerr was on a trip with a friend whose cell phone broke....

Bleak House was begun at Tavistock House, Dickens' London home, in November 1851, continued at Dover, and completed at Boulogne in August 1853. It was originally published in nineteen monthly parts, the last of which was double the size of the...