Discover an American masterpiece. This unassuming story about the life of a quiet English professor has earned the admiration of readers all over the globe.William Stoner is born at the end of the nineteenth century into a dirt-poor Missouri farming family. Sent to the state university to study agronomy, he instead falls in love with English literature and embraces a scholar’s life, so different from the hardscrabble existence he has known. And yet as the years pas...

In his National Book Award–winning novel Augustus, John Williams uncovered the secrets of ancient Rome. With Butcher’s Crossing, his fiercely intelligent, beautifully written western, Williams dismantles the myths of modern America.It is the 1870s, and Will Andrews, fired up by Emerson to seek “an original relation to nature,” drops out of Harvard and heads west. He washes up in Butcher’s Crossing, a small Kansas town on the outskirts of nowhere. Butcher’s Crossing is full ...

WINNER OF THE 1973 NATIONAL BOOK AWARDBy the Author of StonerIn Augustus, his third great novel, John Williams took on an entirely new challenge, a historical narrative set in classical Rome, exploring the life of the founder of the Roman Empire. To tell the story, Williams turned to the epistolary novel, a genre that was new to him, transforming and transcending it just as he did the western in Butcher’s Crossing and the campus novel in Stoner...

Octavian, nineteen and newly orphaned by Julius Caesar’s murder, becomes the heir to Rome and begins the fight to remake the republic into an empire.Set in ancient Rome from 44 B.C. to A.D. 14, Augustus follows Octavian as he becomes Augustus Caesar, the first Roman Emperor.After the murder of Julius Caesar, Augustus moves through power struggles, bloody wars, and family strife as Rome is transformed.Building on impeccable research and vivid charact...

'It's the most marvellous discovery for everyone who loves literature' Ian McEwan, BBC Radio 4Colum McCann once called Stoner one of the great forgotten novels of the past century, but it seems it is forgotten no longer - in 2013 translations of Stoner began appearing on bestseller lists across Europe. Forty-eight years after its first, quiet publication in the US, Stoner is finally finding the wide and devoted readership it deser...

On May 10, 1869, the Golden Spike linked the Central Pacific Railroad with the Union Pacific Railroad at Promontory Point, Utah. The dream of a railroad across America had at last come true. This book tells the story of swaggering men with big plans, of an America emerging from the Civil War and reaching its manifest destiny. The men who imagined the transcontinental railroad were impassioned profiteers, an unlikely, often ruthless band, guilty of both financial double-dealing and ferociou...

**NOW A MAJOR FILM**BY THE AUTHOR OF STONERWill Andrews is no academic. He longs for wildness, freedom, hope and vigour. He leaves Harvard and sets out for the West to discover a new way of living.In a small town called Butcher's Crossing he meets a hunter with a story of a lost herd of buffalo in a remote Colorado valley, just waiting to be taken by a team of men brave and crazy enough to find them. Will makes up his mind to be one of thos...

Sam Houston was one of the most extraordinary figures in American history. During his life, he held an astonishing range of positions: governor of two states (Tennessee and Texas), congressman (Tennessee), senator (Texas), and president of the Republic of Texas during its independence. He was an ardent expansionist who helped make Manifest Destiny a reality, and more than any other individual, he was responsible for Texas's entry into the United States. But Houston was a complex man whose ...

Two cousins are united in their grief for their lost mothers and increasingly begin to struggle with their own feelings for each other.They plan an idyllic holiday at the family's ancentral home in Norfolk during the golden summer of 1914, but their inner emotional battles are thrown into further turmoil as the Balkan Crisis turns to war.One has to remain in England with his father, the other is to also return home with his father - a German navy officer.Now separated ...

In the shadow of Langley Hall, young Thomas Cooper navigates the complexities of friendship, duty and love in Edwardian England. As the son of a tenant farmer, Thomas forms an unlikely bond with Lord John Langley and Prince Christian, two boys from vastly different worlds. Their shared adventures and deepening connections are tested by the rigid boundaries of class and the looming threat of war in the summer of 1914.When tragedy strikes, Thomas is thrust into a role that demands un...

This is not a book for the faint of heart. It's for the weary warrior who refuses to quit. For the believer who's been knocked down, overlooked, or underestimated—but still gets up. This is for the Church that's ready to rise, to war, and to awaken.In Unrelenting, John Williams draws from Scripture, real-life fire, and raw spiritual truth to call the Church out of slumber and into action. From the lonely fields of David to the furnace of Joseph, from repentant tears to rev...

For most of the period after World War II until the fall of the Soviet empire, there was a remarkable consensus in the United States in support of our policies toward the Soviet Union. This consensus resulted in enormous defense expenditures and in the development of a system of alliances that spanned the globe and marked a vast expansion of America's overseas obligations. Compound Dilemmas addresses the question of how such widespread domestic support for a very expensive and continual ar...