Allan Montague arrives in New York eager for a new life, only to find a city where ambition, money, and social influence matter as much as talent. Drawn into a veterans' gathering, he meets the old comrades of his father, including the comic yet memorable Major Thorne, the revered Colonel Anderson, and Judge Ellis, whose polished ease and political connections hint at the power of the right circle. As the Loyal Legion meeting unfolds, stories of the Wilderness, Spottsylvania, captivity, su...

In the dead of night, a bungling burglar named Jim Faraday breaks into the Austin home and finds not fear, but calm compassion. Helen Austin meets him with gentle questions instead of a cry for help, drawing out the truth behind his first robbery and turning a crime in progress into a devastating confession about poverty, desperation, and survival. As Jim tells his story, the real theft comes into view: brutal labor at the Empire Steel Company, a catastrophic accident that cost him an eye,...

The second volume in this essential library gathers James Joyce's modernist vision, Mark Twain's American wit, Jules Verne's boundless imagination, Robert Louis Stevenson's adventure and suspense, Oscar Wilde's epigrammatic brilliance, and Bram Stoker's gothic terror alongside voices from Tolstoy to Tagore, Stendhal to Sienkiewicz. Ranging from French Enlightenment fiction to Victorian sensation novels, Russian realism to early global literature, this collection widens the canon begun in V...

Upton Sinclair turns his autobiography into a vivid, self-mocking chronicle of a life spent testing ideas, challenging conventions, and colliding with history. He begins with a sweeping self-portrait that moves from childhood poverty in Baltimore to literary fame, political activism, and the restlessness that drove him from one cause, colony, and conviction to the next. Beneath the comic detail lies a sharp account of class consciousness, family pride, and the emotional damage of a home sh...

"The Jungle" follows the story of Jurgis Rudkus, a Lithuanian immigrant who arrives in Chicago with his family seeking a better life. The novel vividly depicts the struggles and hardships faced by Jurgis and his fellow workers in the meatpacking plants. It explores the brutal nature of their work, the corruption of the industry, and the impact of capitalism on their lives.Sinclair's primary intention in writing "The Jungle" was to shed light on the mistreatment of workers and the unsanitar...

From the acclaimed author of The Jungle : The first in a Pulitzer Prize–winning historical saga about the son of an American arms dealer during WWI.Lanning "Lanny" Budd spends his first thirteen years in Europe, at the center of his mother's glamorous circle of friends. In 1913, he enters a Swiss boarding school and befriends Rick, an English boy, and Kurt, a German. The three schoolmates are privileged, happy, and precoc...

This 2nd volume of contains the following 50 works, arranged alphabetically by authors' last names: Jerome, Jerome K.: Three Men in a Boat Joyce, James: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Joyce, James: Ulysses Kingsley, Charles: The Water-Babies Kipling, Rudyard: Kim La Fayette, Madame de: The Princess of Clèves Laclos, Pierre Choderlos de: Dangerous Liaisons Lawrence, D. H.: Sons and Lovers Lawrence, D. H.: The Rainbow Le Fanu, Sheridan: In a Glass Darkly Lewis, Matthew Gregory: The ...

From the Pulitzer Prize–winning series, the first four novels featuring an American who comes of age during the turbulent years of the early 20th century.In World's End, Lanning "Lanny" Budd's language skills and talent for decoding messages are in high demand as WWI bursts over Europe. When the hostilities conclude, Lanny joins the Paris Peace Conference as the assistant to a geographer asked by President Woodrow Wilson to redraw the map of Europe.

A muckraking exposé of corruption in American journalism from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The JungleUpton Sinclair dedicated his life to documenting the destructive force of unbridled capitalism. In this influential study, he takes on the effect of money and power on mass media, arguing that the newspapers, magazines, and wire services of the Progressive era formed "a class institution serving the rich and spurning the poor."In the early tw...

A child of privilege plunges into a world of oppression, violence, and danger in this gripping indictment of the coal-mining industry from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The JungleCollege leaves young Hal Warner feeling incomplete, with no sense of the "real" world outside its ivy-covered walls. So he leaves his life of privilege behind and signs on to work in a coal mine owned and operated by the General Fuel Company. But Hal finds out that there is ...

From the Pulitzer Prize–winning series, books four through six featuring a well-connected American art dealer who goes undercover for FDR during WWII.Wide Is the Gate: When his arms dealer father strikes a business deal with Hermann Göring, Lanny Budd is able to move easily among the Nazi high command and gather valuable information for those dedicated to the destruction of Nazism and Fascism. He's playing a dangerous game, which will carry him from German...

What happens when the pursuit of the American Dream collides with poverty, exploitation, and an unforgiving system? In The Jungle, Upton Sinclair follows Jurgis Rudkus, a Lithuanian immigrant who arrives in Chicago with his family hoping to build a better life. Instead, they encounter brutal working conditions, poverty, exploitation, corruption, and a society that offers little protection to vulnerable workers. Set in Chicago's meatpacking industry, the novel exposes the harsh realities fa...