100 greatest books of all time

There is no more authoritative collection of the poetry that Eliot himself wished to preserve than this volume, published two years before his death in 1965. Poet, dramatist, critic, and editor, T. S. Eliot was one of the defining figures of twentieth-century poetry. This edition of Collected Poems 1909-1962 includes The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock along with Four Quartets, The Waste Land, and several other poems.

Considered one of the world's greatest novels, this controversial classic offers modern readers a vivid, timeless depiction of the clash between the older Russian aristocracy and the youthful radicalism that foreshadowed the revolution. Includes a new Introduction. Reissue.

Contained within this volume are some of the best of O'Neill's early one-act plays, which foreshadowed the longer plays that have given this dramatist his most enduring fame. "Beyond the Horizon" was the first of O'Neill's three Pulitzer Prize-winning plays. It follows the disappointed dreams of two brothers on their family farm. "The Emperor Jones" is an expressionistic transformation of a black man named Brutus Jones. In fleeing from his rebelling...

The eponymous Jim is a young, good-looking, genial, and naive water-clerk on the Patna, a cargo ship plying Asian waters. He is, we are told, "the kind of fellow you would, on the strength of his looks, leave in charge of the deck." He also harbors romantic fantasies of adventure and heroism--which are promptly scuttled one night when the ship collides with an obstacle and begins to sink. Acting on impulse, Jim jumps overboard and lands in a lifeboat,...

"Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven." Blind, broken by the death of his wife and bitterly disappointed by the Restoration, Milton dictated his sweeping biblical epic Paradise Lost to a series of helpers. While the struggle between God and Satan rages across the cosmos, the human tragedy of Adam and Eve the temptation and fall is movingly depicted in language unsurpassed in its musicality and beauty. A staggering and audacious undertaking...

A compliation of the political writings of English-born American political activist, philosopher, political theorist, and revolutionary Thomas Paine including the contents of his most influential pamphlets written at the start of the American Revolution.

Benjamin Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, statesman, and diplomat. As a scientist, he was a major figure in the American Enlightenment and the history of physics for his discoveries and theories regarding electricity. Hear his own thoughts in his autobiography.