"Sometimes trees can look healthy on the outside, but actually be dying inside. These trees fall unexpectedly during a storm." For high school senior Parker Rabinowitz, anything less than success is a failure. A dropped extracurricular, a C on a calc quiz, a non-Jewish shiksa girlfriend—one misstep, and his meticulously constructed life splinters and collapses. The countdown to HYP (Harvard, Yale, Princeton) has begun, and he will stay focused. That's why he has to keep it a secret. The po...

At the beginning of the Civil War, Lula McLean’s family home in Manassas, Virginia, is taken over by the Confederate army and used as its headquarters. Forced to flee by the oncoming Union army, Lula and her family and her favorite rag doll move south to a small village called Appomattox Court House. Then one day in 1865, Lula left her doll behind, and what happened next made history.

An Israeli immigrant's journey to become a "real" American.With their mother caring for relatives in Israel and their father driving a cab all hours of the day, Roxanne and her sister, Gayle, spend a lot of time watching television reruns of Little House on the Prairie, The Brady Bunch, and Wonder Woman—perfect examples of perfect Americans. Roxanne is desperate to be like them.When Liat, a fellow Israeli, moves into the "Cursed House" next door, things begin to change and ...

"Sometimes trees can look healthy on the outside, but actually be dying inside. These trees fall unexpectedly during a storm."For high school senior Parker Rabinowitz, anything less than success is a failure. A dropped extracurricular, a C on a calc quiz, a non-Jewish shiksa girlfriend―one misstep, and his meticulously constructed life splinters and collapses. The countdown to HYP (Harvard, Yale, Princeton) has begun, and he will stay focused.That's why he has to keep it a ...

The first book-length study of the writings, work, and life of Renaissance man and Alabama native Albert MurrayThis collection consists of essays written by prominent African American literature, jazz, and Albert Murray scholars, reminiscences from Murray protégés and associates, and interviews with Murray himself. It illustrates Murray’s place as a central figure in African American arts and letters and as an American cul...

The eighteenth century was a golden age of adaptation: classical epics were adapted to contemporaneous mock-epics, life writing to novels, novels to plays, and unauthorized sequels abounded. In our own time, cultural products of the long eighteenth century continue to be widely adapted. Early novels such as Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver's Travels, the founding documents of the United States, Jane Austen's novels, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein-all of these have been adapted so often that they ...