Newest Study Guides
Each study guide includes essays, an in-depth chapter-by-chapter summary and analysis, character list, theme list, historical context, author biography and quiz. Study guides are available in PDF format.
Each study guide includes essays, an in-depth chapter-by-chapter summary and analysis, character list, theme list, historical context, author biography and quiz. Study guides are available in PDF format.
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...
Nadja is a French novel written by the French author named André Breton. It is written in a genre called “surrealist narration” and is often pictured as the leading catalyst novel in the surrealist movement in France. The book was first published...
Released in 2004, Gail Jones' Sixty Lights tells the story of a woman named Lucy Strange. In the novel, she is growing up in Victorian Australia and England and is fascinated by new photographic technology, which she uses to take beautiful...
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 The “ghosts” of the title are metaphorical, referring to outdated traditions and the...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,...
Chocolat is a cinematically renowned drama, based on the book of the same name by Joanne Harris. The movie was releases on December 15, 2000, by Miramax films, and was directed by Lasse Hallström. The movie tells the story of Vianne Rocher, and...
Primo Levi's first books about his experiences through the Holocaust were autobiographical and subjective; in this, his last book, he tries to take a more analytical approach and the book is written in the style of a philosophy treatise or...
"The Trial of an Ox for Killing a Man" is a chap book from the early 1830s. Chap books were cheaply printed, crudely decorated short booklets that were sold on the street to provide some easy reading for the everyday man. This specific book was...
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...
Published in 2019, On the Come Up is a fictional teenage poverty novel that explores the life of an aspiring rapper who lives in a poor neighborhood and is perceived as a hoodlum by most of the people she knows. Her father, who was also a rapper,...
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,...
What is the difference between a political book and a political manifesto? Answer: absolutely nothing. This becomes abundantly evident in Bernie Sanders' book "Where We Go From Here" which reads more like a biography of a future presidential...
Shortest Way Home is a narrative by Pete Buttigieg, who is the mayor of South Bend Indiana. The book, published in February 2019, details Buttigieg's views of what politics should be, which sharply contrast the controversial topics discussed in...
Published in 2014, The Sixth Extinction is a non-fiction book chronicling how humans have drastically changed the environment in which we live. With the combination of pollution and deforestation, we have destroyed the lives of so many animals and...
Published in 2018, New Dark Age is a novel examining the extent to which people have lost touch with reality due to the widespread introduction of technology. Bridle argues that most people believe knowledge of the world comes from a vast...
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...
Depending upon whether you are reading the first or second printing of this collection of essays and short stories by renowned science fiction writer Octavia E. Butler, you will be entertained, enthralled and often completely nauseated by either...
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...
The Education of Henry Adams is Henry Adams' autobiography, originally published in 1918 upon his death (though Adams wrote the book earlier). It details not only Adams' life, but the history that unfolded around him, including the presidencies of...
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...