Over 40 years ago the historic Kerner Commission Report declared that America was undergoing an urban crisis whose effects were disproportionately felt by underclass populations. In America's Urban Crisis and the Advent of Color-blind Politics, Curtis Ivery and Joshua Bassett explore the persistence of this crisis today, despite public beliefs that America has become a "post-racial" nation after the election of Barack Obama to the presidency.Ivery and Bassett combine their...

In this era of political correctness, it is often impossible to say things as one would like. Indeed, certain ways of feeling and talking that were once acceptable are now, in effect, forbidden. Of course, taboos extend further than speech. Social and sexual inhibitions are also evident. Benjamin DeMott argues that the very least a society should do is to try to understand the meaning of its own inhibitions. As he writes in this new edition of You Don't Say, "a supple awareness of...

Supergrow is a collection of fifteen essays that appeared between 1966 and 1969 in publications such as the American Scholar, the New York Times, Antioch Review, Esquire, and the Saturday Review. Author Benjamin DeMott discusses everything under the sun--music, improving one's sex life, violence in Mississippi, theater, student revolts--but a single theme unifies the material: people ought to use their imaginations more. The book starts from the assumption that our troubles stem from failu...

D. H. Lawrence’s great autobiographical novel paints a provocative portrait of an artist torn between affection for his mother and desire for two beautiful women. Set in the Nottinghamshire coalfields of Lawrence’s own boyhood, the story follows young Paul Morel’s growth into manhood in a British working-class family.Gertrude Morel, Paul’s puritanical mother, concentrates all her love and attention on Paul, nurturing his talents as a painter. When she muses that he might marry some...

Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time"It is very difficult for a writer of my generation, if he is honest, to pretend indifference to the work of Somerset Maugham," wrote Gore Vidal. "He was always so entirely there."Originally published in 1915, Of Human Bondage is a potent expression of the power of sexual obsession and of modern man's yearning for freedom. This classic bildungsroman tells the story of Philip Carey, a sen...

First published in 1910, Howards End is the novel that earned E. M. Forster recognition as a major writer. Soon to be a limited series on Starz.At its heart lie two families—the wealthy and business-minded Wilcoxes and the cultured and idealistic Schlegels. When the beautiful and independent Helen Schlegel begins an impetuous affair with the ardent Paul Wilcox, a series of events is sparked—some very funny, some very tragic—that results in a dispute over who will inherit H...

First published in 1910, Howards End is the novel that earned E. M. Forster recognition as a major writer. Soon to be a limited series on Starz.At its heart lie two families—the wealthy and business-minded Wilcoxes and the cultured and idealistic Schlegels. When the beautiful and independent Helen Schlegel begins an impetuous affair with the ardent Paul Wilcox, a series of events is sparked—some very funny, some very tragic—that results in a dispute over who will inherit H...

Ursula and Gudrun Brangwen sat one morning in the window-bay of their father's house in Beldover, working and talking. Ursula was stitching a piece of brightly-coloured embroidery, and Gudrun was drawing upon a board which she held on her knee. They were mostly silent, talking as their thoughts strayed through their minds.'Ursula,' said Gudrun, 'don't you REALLY WANT to get married?' Ursula laid her embroidery in her lap and looked up. Her face was calm and considerate.'I don...

When Adela and her elderly companion, Mrs. Moore, arrive in the town of Chandrapore, India, they quickly feel trapped by its insular and prejudiced British community.Determined to explore the “real India,” they seek the guidance of the charming and mercurial Dr. Aziz, a cultivated Indian Muslim. But a mysterious incident occurs while they are exploring the Marabar caves with Aziz, and the well-respected doctor soon finds himself at the center of a scandal that rouses violent passio...

Are the ghosts real—or just in her mind? The Turn of the Screw is Henry James' iconic novella of psychological horror, ambiguity, and creeping dread. A young governess is hired to care for two orphaned children in a remote country estate. But when she begins to see ghostly apparitions, the line between reality and madness begins to blur. Is she protecting the children—or projecting her own fears onto them? With masterful prose and unsettling atmosphere, James crafts a tale that has fascina...

A cruel joke at a country fair goes too far when a drunken laborer auctions off his wife and child to the highest bidder. So begins The Mayor of Casterbridge, Thomas Hardy's gripping tale of a man's rise and fall amid the natural beauty and human brutality of a rural English community.First published serially in 1886, the novel was praised by critics for its realism and poetic style. Most agreed, however, that its plot hinges upon unlikely turns of events. Hardy replied, "I...

Sir Thomas More wrote Utopia in 1516 in Latin. His Utopia is a fictional island, whose society, religion and politics he explores. Critics do not believe that the island depicted More's idea of the perfect society, but rather that he hoped to throw the politics of his own time into a new light by contrasting them with his imagined island society. The work references Plato's Republic.