While much has been written about the impact of Darwin’s theories on U.S. culture, and countless scholarly collections have been devoted to the science of evolution, few have addressed the specific details of Darwin’s theories as a cultural force affecting U.S. writers. America’s Darwin fills this gap and features a range of critical approaches that examine U.S. textual responses to Darwin’s works.The scholars in this collection represent a range of disciplines—literature,...

First published in 1869, Lorna Doone is the story of John Ridd, a farmer who finds love amid the religious and social turmoil of seventeenth-century England. He is just a boy when his father is slain by the Doones, a lawless clan inhabiting wild Exmoor on the border of Somerset and Devon. Seized by curiosity and a sense of adventure, he makes his way to the valley of the Doones, where he is discovered by the beautiful Lorna. In time their childish fantasies blossom into mature lov...

A stirring account of wartime experiences from the leader of the first regiment of emancipated slavesThomas Wentworth Higginson, a Unitarian minister, was a fervent member of new England's abolitionist movement, an active participant in the Underground Railroad, and part of a group that supplied material aid to John Brown before his ill-fated raid on Harpers Ferry. When the Civil War broke out, Higginson was commissioned as a colonel of the black troops training in...

Discover a new way to read classics with Quick Read.This Quick Read edition includes both the full text and a summary for each chapter.- Reading time of the complete text: about 6 hours- Reading time of the summarized text: 12 minutes"The Souls of Black Folk" is a book written by W.E.B. Du Bois that discusses the history of African Americans and their struggle for equality and justice. Du Bois coined the term "double-consciousness" to describe the feeling of al...

According to Wikipedia: "John McElroy (1846–1929) was an American printer, soldier, journalist and author, most known for writing the novel The Red Acorn and the four-volume Andersonville: A Story of Rebel Military Prisons, based upon his lengthy confinement in the Confederate Andersonville prison camp during the American Civil War... In January 1864, he was among dozens of men captured in a skirmish near Jonesville, Virginia, by Confederate cavalrymen under William E. Jones. McElroy sent ...

In Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom (1860), William Craft recounts the circumstances under which he and his wife escaped from slavery. His account also relates incidents that portray the evils of slavery, including its negative effects on slaveholders, white children sold into slavery, and other slaves.

This essential one-volume collection brings together some of the most influential and significant works by African-American writers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.Included herein are such classics as Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (1845) and excerpts from W.E.B. DuBois’s The Souls of Black Folk (1903), Harriet A. Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Written by Herself

A detailed account of the man who assassinated Abraham Lincoln. This, in its day, was a "media sensation." The assassination of Abraham Lincoln launched John Wilkes Booth into infamy--not the kind of "fame" he was hoping for. Townsend was a writer for the New York Herald and used the pen name "Gath".It was a time when Lincoln was being martyred, a Christlike figure, while his assassin was being demonized, a Judas figure. With the country still in mourning in 1866, Gath had no troub...

This compelling historical fiction of the Civil War and Lincoln’s assassination is an “exploration by a brilliant and thoughtful writer of the labyrinthine ways of good and evil”(Los Angeles Times)"The Judges of the Secret Court isn’t just a novel about John Wilkes Booth; it is a vision of what life and the world do to us."—Michael Dirda, The Washington PostDavid Stacton’s The Judges of The Secret Court i...

Austin Steward's autobiographical work 'Twenty-Two Years a Slave and Forty Years a Freeman' is a poignant account of his life as an African American man living in the early 19th century. The book details his experiences as a slave for over two decades, highlighting the harsh realities of slavery and the resilience of the human spirit. Steward's narrative is imbued with raw emotion and vivid descriptions, providing readers with a window into the past and a deeper understanding of the strugg...