Catalog Search Results
1) The jungle
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A documentary novel portraying industry's conditions at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. Sinclair's novel prompted public outrage which led President Theodore Roosevelt to demand an official investigation. This eventually led to the passage of the Pure Food and Drug laws.
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Harper torchbooks volume TB1912
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Acclaimed by literary critic Carl Van Doren as "the most important of all immigrant novels," The Rise of David Levinsky takes place amid America's biggest and most diverse Yiddish-speaking community during the early 20th century. David Levinsky, a young Hasidic Jew struggling to master the Talmud, seeks his fortune amid the teeming streets of New York's Lower East Side. All the energy formerly focused on his religious studies now turns in the direction...
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"Ifemelu and Obinze are young and in love when they depart military-ruled Nigeria for the West. Beautiful, self-assured Ifemelu heads for America, where despite her academic success, she is forced to grapple with what it means to be black for the first time. Quiet, thoughtful Obinze had hoped to join her, but with post-9/11 America closed to him, he instead plunges into a dangerous, undocumented life in London. Fifteen years later, they reunite in...
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Modern Library college editions volume T21
A Silver classic
Everyman's library volume 125
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A Silver classic
Everyman's library volume 125
More Series...
Summary
"The canonical American masterpiece of sin, guilt, and revenge, in an authoritative new edition from Penguin Classics with a foreword by Tom Perrotta At once retrospective and radically new, The Scarlet Letter portrays seventeenth-century Puritan New England, a time period irreversibly encoded in the American identity. Hawthorne built one of the most incisive and devastating human dramas ever written out of a community and its outcasts: Hester Prynne...
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In seventeenth-century Boston, Hester Prynne shoulders the scorn of her fellow Puritan townsfolk for bearing a child out of wedlock. For her refusal to name the father of her daughter Pearl, Hester is made to wear a scarlet 'A' stitched conspicuously upon her dress. But though she bears the stigma of the shame her peers would confer upon her, others feel the guilt for her transgression more acutely--notably the pious Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, the...
8) O pioneers!
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"O Pioneers! (1913) is the story of Alexandra Bergson, a fiercely independent and clear-headed young woman whose passionate faith in the Nebraska prairie makes her a wealthy landowner." "Willa Cather's second novel is imbued with the democratic utopianism of Walt Whitman and the serene regionalism of Sarah Orne Jewett, but it is not merely an elegy for the lost glories of America's pioneer past. In its rage for order and efficiency, O pioneers! also...
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From National Book Award-winning, New York Times-bestselling author Louise Erdrich, a profound and enchanting new novel: a richly imagined world "where butchers sing like angels."
Having survived World War I, Fidelis Waldvogel returns to his quiet German village and marries the pregnant widow of his best friend, killed in action. With a suitcase full of sausages and a master butcher's precious knife set, Fidelis sets out for America. In Argus, North...
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The extraordinary biographical novel about a Chinese-American woman who fought for independence and dignity in the American West—“an important contribution to the history of pioneer women” (Ms. Magazine)
Lalu Nathoy’s father called his thirteen-year-old daughter his treasure, his “thousand pieces of gold”—yet when famine strikes northern China in 1871, he is forced to sell her. Polly,...
Lalu Nathoy’s father called his thirteen-year-old daughter his treasure, his “thousand pieces of gold”—yet when famine strikes northern China in 1871, he is forced to sell her. Polly,...
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Berrybender narratives volume 2
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The indefatigable Tasmin Berrybender and her eccentric family trek on through the unexplored Wild West of 1830s America--and suffer the harsh realities of the untamed wilderness, including sickness, brutal vioelnce and death, the desertion of trusted servants, and the increasing hardships of daily life in a land where survival is never certain.
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Berrybender narratives volume 3
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At the heart of this third volume of his Western saga remains the beautiful and determined Tasmin Berrybender, now married to the ?Sin Killer? and mother to their young son, Monty. By Sorrow?s River continues the Berrybender party?s trail across the endless Great Plains of the West toward Santa Fe, where they intend, those who are lucky enough to survive the journey, to spend the winter. They meet up with a vast array of characters from the history...
13) The immigrants
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"A most wonderful book...there hasn't been a novel in years that can do a job on readers' emotions that the last fifty pages of The Immigrants does."—Los Angeles Times
The first book in bestselling author Howard Fast's beloved family saga, The Immigrants is a transcendent work of historical fiction.
In this sweeping journey of love and fortune, master storyteller Howard Fast recounts the family saga
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"Maddalena Grasso has lost her country, her family, and the man she loved by coming to America. Her mercurial husband, Antonio, has lost his opportunity to realize the American Dream. Their friend Guilio Fabbri, a shy accordion player, has lost his beloved parents. In the shadow of St. Anthony's Church, named for the patron saint of lost things, fate and circumstances conspire to answer their prayers in unforeseeable ways"--Page 4 of cover.
15) My Antonia
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Widely recognized as Willa Cather's finest book and one of the outstanding novels of American literature, My Antonia deals with the life of Bohemian immigrant and native American settlers in the vast frontier farmlands of Nebraska. It is a work which is particularly noted for its lucid and moving depiction of the prairie and the lives of those who live close beside it.
16) A breath of hope
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"Nilda Carlson has been trying to save enough money to go to America for months, so when a letter from Einar and Gerd Strand arrives, offering to pay her ticket, she jumps at the chance. Her younger brother Ivar accompanies her, and they can't wait to join their brother Rune and his family in the northern forests of Minnesota. Signe and Rune Carlson are thrilled to welcome Nilda and Ivar to America, but life on the farm remains a struggle. Though...
17) The namesake
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A young man born of Indian parents in America struggles with issues of identity from his teens to his thirties.
18) Sin killer
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Berrybender narratives volume 1
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Follows the adventures of the Berrybenders, a large, noble English family traveling the Missouri River in 1832. This deeply self-absorbed and spoiled family leaves England for the unknown of the American West, based solely on a "whim" and Lord Berrybender's desire to "shoot different animals from those he shot at home." The novel joins the family as they make their way toward Yellowstone aboard a luxury steamer, accompanied by a motley assemblage...
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With their eldest son about to be drafted into military service, Reinhardt and Lillian Vogt decide to immigrate to America with their three sons and Reinhardt's adopted brother. After tragedy strikes during the voyage, their hopeful dreams turn to dust. Can they maintain the faith of their fathers in a new land?