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American author Anthony Marra's collection of short stories entitled The Tsar of Love and Techno (2015) tells the stories of a wide array of diverse characters - all of whom live in Russia in times periods ranging from 1937 to the Present Day....

Dennis Johnson's novel, Tree of Smoke, is set in Vietnam during the years between 1963 and 1970. The book centers around its protagonist, Skip Sands, who joins the C.I.A. and is posted to Vietnam, where he works for his uncle, Colonel Francis X....

Written by American author Denis Johnson, The Name of the World (2001) tells the story of a man named Michael Reed, a man who is haunted by the death of his wife and child. After their life, he has spent his life in an incredibly numb state and...

"The Ballot or the Bullet" is a groundbreaking speech given by civil rights pioneer Malcolm X on April 3 and 12, 1964. The speech was delivered twice—first at the Cory Methodist Church in Cleveland, Ohio, and second at the King Solomon Baptist...

Published in 1983, Life and Times of Michael K is a realistic fiction novel by South African author J.M. Coetzee. The book follows the story of Michael K, a poor man living in South Africa and navigating a (fictitious) civil war during the period...

First published in 1939, and considered an early indication of Eudora Welty’s promise as a leading figure in Southern realism, “Petrified Man” has gone on to be one of the most anthologized and analyzed short stories of her extensive oeuvre.

The...

Published in June 2019, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is Ocean Vuong's debut novel. Written in the style of an epistolary novel—a letter from a young Vietnamese-American man (Little Dog) to his older, illiterate mother (Rose)—the novel explores...

Irmgard Keun's novel, After Midnight, takes place in a Germany that is already darkened under the shadow of Adolf Hitler, but not yet as dark as it will become as war approaches. Because of this, many of the characters in the book are on a...

Logan (2017) is Hugh Jackman's final outing in the role of Wolverine - it is truly his swansong. Taking inspiration from the "Old Man Logan" comic book series, the film follows an aging - and dying - Wolverine, who is trying to earn enough money...

Gene Luen Yang's graphic novel American Born Chinese comprises three apparently separate storylines: the first follows a monkey deity's desire to be all-powerful; the second follows Jin Wang, a child of Chinese immigrants, as he wrestles with his...

Peter Jackson's They Shall Not Grow Old (2018) is a documentary like any other. Covering the British front of WWI, audiences experience the war through the eyes - and ears - of those who experienced it firsthand. To tell the stories of those who...

Sam Shepard wrote Buried Child, perhaps his best-known play and the play that won him the Pulitzer in 1979, while he was the playwright-in-residence at the Magic Theatre in San Francisco. It is the play most widely credited with turning Shepard...

Prep is Curtis Sittenfeld's debut novel. The book's plot revolves around the high-school career of Lee Fiora, a student at the fictional Ault School in Massachusetts. Unlike most prep school students, Lee comes from a middle-class background and...

Written by prolific Australian playwright Alex Buzo, Norm and Ahmed (1968) was the subject of a tremendous amount of controversy when it was released. Originally, the play ended with the line "f*cking boong," an ethnic slur. The actor who used...

Baldwin's 1965 collection of short stories, Going to Meet the Man, is comprised mostly of stories he previously published between 1948 and 1960. The stories touch on themes of sexuality, class, and race, in particular the experience of black...

Directed and written by Rian Johnson (best known for Looper and Star Wars: The Last Jedi), Knives Out (2019) is a mystery following Ana De Armas’ Marta, a nurse who is tasked with caring for and accompanying Christopher Plummer’s Harlan, a mystery...

Written by the prolific English playwright George Lillo, The London Merchant (first performed in 1731) tells the darkly tragic story of the downfall of a young man because he has associated himself with a prostitute named Sarah Millwood. Lillo's...

Joker is a film directed, produced, and written by Todd Phillips (his cowriter was Scott Silver). It is based around the DC Comics villain The Joker and stars Joaquin Phoenix as the title character. Phillips cites Martin Scorsese's films Taxi...

O. Henry's 1907 short story "The Last Leaf" is about a young artist named Johnsy who falls victim to a pneumonia epidemic that hits New York City. As Johnsy counts the ivy leaves falling off the vine outside her window, she superstitiously...

Poet Juan Felipe Herrera has been publishing poetry for almost four decades, and most of his body of work is represented in his poem Half the World in Light. Like all of his previous poems, its central theme is the Chicano experience in the United...

Richard Wagamese published Medicine Walk in 2014. Wagamese was an acclaimed First Nations Ojibway author most notably known for his novel Indian Horse, which was adapted into a film in 2017.

Medicine Walk is told from the perspective of Franklin...

In her memoir entitled Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots (released in 2012), author Deborah Feldman discusses her early life in an incredibly religious Jewish community in Brooklyn, New York. She chronicles not only her life...

The Winter of Our Discontent was published in 1961 by John Steinbeck and was the last novel he wrote. The novel gets its title from Richard III, a play written by William Shakespeare:

"Now is the winter of our discontentMade glorious summer by...

Christopher Fry's The Lady's Not for Burning is a play about a man named Thomas Mendip. Thomas is a discharged soldier who wants to commit suicide but ultimately doesn't. Later on, Thomas meets with the mayor and is about to hang himself but,...