LITMIR.BIZ

The Bhagavadgita is part of the great Indian epic the Mahabharata, and it is one of the major religious documents of the world, occupying in Hinduism a position not unlike the Sermon on the Mount in Christianity. One of the most celebrated treasures of world literature as well, it is in the form of a poetic dialogue between the epic's hero, Arjuna, and his friend Krishna, believed to be an incarnation of God.The dialogue, which takes place on the eve of an historic battle, probes the nature of God and what man should do to reach him. As the Bhagavadgita unfolds, this majestic poem provides a fascinating synopsis of the religious thought and experience of India through the ages. This edition offers the classic English verse translation by Sir Edwin Arnold (1832–1904), long admired for its evocation of the true feeling of the original poetry.

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Jack London's novels and ruggedly individual life seemed to embody American hopes, frustrations, and romantic longings in the turbulent first years of the twentieth century, years infused with the wonder and excitement of great technological and historic change. The author's restless spirit, taste for a life of excitement, and probing mind led him on a series of hard-edged adventures from the Klondike to the South Seas. Out of these sometimes harrowing experiences — and his fascination with the theories of such thinkers as Darwin, Spencer, and Marx — came the inspiration for novels of adventure that would make him one of America’s most popular writers.The Call of the Wild, considered by many London's greatest novel, is a gripping tale of a heroic dog that, thrust into the brutal life of the Alaska Gold Rush, ultimately faces a choice between living in man's world and returning to nature. Adventure and dog-story enthusiasts as well as students and devotees of American literature will find this classic work a thrilling, memorable reading experience.

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A sensitive and moving portrait of a Victorian town, captured at a transitional period in English society, Cranford first appeared serially in Charles Dickens's magazine Household Words from 1851 to 1853, and in book form in 1853. Author Elizabeth Gaskell situated her stories in a hamlet very like the one in which she grew up, and her affectionate but unsentimental portraits of the residents of Cranford offer a realistic view of life and manners in an English country village during the 1830s.Cranford recounts the events and activities in the loves of a group of spinsters and widows who struggle in genteel poverty to maintain their standards of propriety, decency, and kindness. Tales of the heroism and self-sacrifice of Captain Brown, the surprisingly betrothal of Lady Glenmire, and the future for pretty but poor Miss Jessie support a web of subtle but serious themes that include the movement from aristocratic to middle-class values, the separate spheres and diverse experiences of men and women, and the curious coexistence of customs old and new in a changing society.Often referred to as Mrs. Gaskell, the author preferred Cranford to all her other works, which include a popular biography of her friend Charlotte Brontë. Praised by Charles Dickens as «delightful, and touched with the most tender and delicate manner,» the novel remains a favorite with students and aficionados of nineteenth-century literature.

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Assembled from the works of the finest masters of the genre, these compelling narratives promise to raise gooseflesh and accelerate pulses with their supernatural scenarios.Featured stories include J. S. LeFanu's «An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street,» with a mysterious old mansion as the focal point; Mary E. Wilkins' «The Lost Ghost,» in which a strange child's disturbing presence instills fear and foreboding in all those she encounters; Robert Louis Stevenson's «The Body-Snatchers»; «Mrs. Zant and the Ghost,» by Wilkie Collins; and other gripping works by Charles Dickens, Henry James, Ralph Cram, Mrs. Henry Wood, Amelia B. Edwards, Fitz-James O'Brien, and M. R. James.Rich in detail and ghoulish incidents, this modestly priced collection will thrill readers who appreciate tales of terror as well as devotees of well-crafted literature.

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The distinguished American civil rights leader, W. E. B. Du Bois first published these fiery essays, sketches, and poems individually nearly 80 years ago in the Atlantic, the Journal of Race Development, and other periodicals. Reflecting the author's ideas as a politician, historian, and artist, this volume has long moved and inspired readers with its militant cry for social, political, and economic reforms for black Americans. Essential reading for students of African-American history

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Newspaperman, short-story writer, poet, and satirist, Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914) is one of the most striking and unusual literary figures America has produced. Dubbed «Bitter Bierce» for his vitriolic wit and biting satire, his fame rests largely on a celebrated compilation of barbed epigrams, The Devil's Dictionary, and a book of short stories (Tales of Soldiers and Civilians, 1891). Most of the 16 selections in this volume have been taken from the latter collection.The stories in this edition include: «What I Saw at Shiloh,» «A Son of the Gods,» «Four Days in Dixie,» «One of the Missing,» «A Horseman in the Sky,» «The Coup de Grace,» «An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,» «The Story of Conscience,» «One Kind of Officer,» «Chickamauga,» and five more.Bierce's stories employ a buildup of suggestive realistic detail to produce grim and vivid tales often disturbing in their mood of fatalism and impending calamity. Hauntingly suggestive, they offer excellent examples of the author's dark pessimism and storytelling power.

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Walt Whitman experienced the agonies of the Civil War firsthand, working, in his forties, as a dedicated volunteer throughout the conflict in Washington's overcrowded, understaffed military hospitals. This superb selection of his poems, letters, and prose from the war years, filled with the sights and sounds of war and its ugly aftermath, express a vast and powerful range of emotions.Among the poems include here, first published in Drum-Taps (1865) and Sequel to Drum-Taps (1866), are a number of Whitman's most famous works: «O Captain! My Captain!» «The Wound-Dresser,» «When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd,» and «Come Up from the Fields, Father.» The letters and prose selections, including Whitman's musings on the publication of his works, on the wounded men he tended, and his impressions of Lincoln traveling about the city of Washington, offer keen insights into an extraordinary era in American history.

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Chicago Poems (1916) was Carl Sandburg's first-published book of verse. Written in the poet's unique, personal idiom, these poems embody a soulfulness, lyric grace, and a love of and compassion for the common man that earned Sandburg a reputation as a «poet of the people.»Among the dozens of poems in this collection are such well-known verses as «Chicago,» «Fog,» «To a Contemporary Bunkshooter,» «Who Am I?» and «Under the Harvest Moon,» as well as numerous others on themes of war, immigrant life, death, love, loneliness, and the beauty of nature. These early poems reveal the simplicity of style, honesty, and vision that characterized all of Sandburg's work and earned him enormous popularity in the 1920s and '30s and a Pulitzer prize in poetry in 1951.

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After kicking open the doors to twentieth-century philosophy in Thus Spake Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche refined his ideal of the superman with the 1886 publication of Beyond Good and Evil. Conventional morality is a sign of slavery, Nietzsche maintains, and the superman goes beyond good and evil in action, thought, and creation. Nietzsche especially targets what he calls a «slave morality» that fosters herdlike quiescence and stigmatizes the «highest human types.»In this pathbreaking work, Nietzsche's philosophical and literary powers are at their height: with devastating irony and flashing wit he gleefully dynamites centuries of accumulated conventional wisdom in metaphysics, morals, and psychology, clearing a path for such twentieth-century innovators as Thomas Mann, André Gide, Sigmund Freud, George Bernard Shaw, André Malraux, and Jean-Paul Sartre, all of whom openly acknowledged their debt to him.Students of philosophy and literature as well as general readers will prize this rich sampling of Nietzsche's thought in an unabridged and inexpensive edition of one of the philosopher's most important works.

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The Cherry Orchard was first produced by the Moscow Art Theatre on Chekhov's last birthday, January 17, 1904. Since that time it has become one of the most critically admired and performed plays in the Western world, a high comedy whose principal theme, the passing of the old semifeudal order, is symbolized in the sale of the cherry orchard owned by Madame Ranevsky.The play also functions as a magnificent showcase for Chekhov's acute observations of his characters' foibles and for quizzical ruminations on the approaching dissolution of the world of the Russian aristocracy and life as it was lived on their great country estates. While the subject and the characters of the work are, in a sense, timeless, the dramatic technique of the play was a Chekhovian innovation. In this and other plays he developed the concept of «indirect action,» in which the dramatic action takes place off stage and the significance of the play revolves around the reactions of the characters to those unseen events.Reprinted from a standard edition, this inexpensive well-made volume invites any lover of theater or great literature to enter the world of Madame Ranevsky, Anya, Gayef, Lopakhin, Firs, and the other memorable characters whose hopes, fears, loves, and general humanity are so brilliantly depicted in this landmark of world drama.

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