Study guides: books, letter t - Page 2 | Just Great DataBase
The deeply touching novel by Potok tells us the story of the two boys, their friendship, family issues and their coming of age they go through together. Danny and Reuven are both boys from Jewish families, but while Danny is the son of an ultra-orthodoxical rabbi, Reuven is a descendent of the more modern family. The boys befriend each other on the baseball match between their schools and this...
“The Color Purple” is a story about the social position of African-American women, written by Alice Walker in 1982. The book talks about pretty sad and explicit events in the lives of the most vulnerable members of the nation. It is a known fact that it used to be okay for white people to think of themselves better in comparison to those of other skin colors. But that’s...
The Contender is a debut novel by Robert Lipsyte that tells us the story of a black young man who lives in Harlem with his aunt and cousins. His harsh life is urging him to take the easiest way of criminal life and becoming a thug, but the main character named Alfred Brooks struggles and tries to use his destructive impulses for good. The story of Alfred Brooks is the story of silent rebellion...
Alexander Dumas wrote “The Count of Monte Cristo” in 1844 and it instantly became hugely popular among the public. Together with his other famous book, “The Three Musketeers”, it won a place in the world literature heritage forever. The events of the book happen in Italy and France during the Restoration area of the beginning of the 19th century. A young Edmond Dantes is...
Arthur Miller is a strong name in the history of American drama performances. He was always good with words and knew how to see through the American society. He also had a strong political opinion and disagreed profoundly with an unsound anti-communistic agenda of the 1950s. In his plays he showed how different kinds of obsessions can be picked up by the population and lead to unreasonable...
The Day of the Locust is an interesting example of portraying the realistic events through the eyes of the main character - an artist, who sees them as an inspiration for his painting. The novel plays with Hollywood stereotypes, showing the full range of them: from young starlets who appear to be gold-diggers and to greedy and lusty producers. The painting that the protagonist - a young graduate...
As other famous works of Erik Larson, “The Devil in the White City” is based on the real historical events that the author studied carefully. He filled them with a new sense and perspective and turned the dry historical facts and personalities into living, breathing characters. Two plotlines - one of the Devil and the other of the main architect of the White City are tightly...
Dante Alighieri is a fascinating medieval figure. He has experienced the tragedy of loosing a loved one who he didn’t even have a chance to marry because his family chose another woman to be his wife. This life’s tragedy among many others greatly intensified his interest in philosophy and country’s political life. The “Divine Comedy” consists of three separate books...
“The Epic of Gilgamesh” is worth reading just because it’s the oldest story the humanity has produced. Originating in Mesopotamia, the poem brought together five classic legends about Sumarian king Uruk. Despite typical poems meant to glorify the empire and its emperor for the sake of keeping the order in place, “The Epic of Gilgamesh” has a much broader meaning...
The father of a detective genre and a great English writer created “The Fall of the House of Usher” in 1839. The text is rich in Edgar Allan Poe’s typical atmosphere, writing style, rampant imagination, and suspense. It is a great exercise for the mind and also emotions. The story takes the reader into a world of mystery, despair, and extinction. We get to meet a very old...
Most of us know the world bestseller “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand, but her literary success started from yet another book about the same idea: “The Fountainhead”. The unique approach of the author to the values of the individualism and freedom through devotion to one’s work makes this book one of the remarkable works of the modern literature. This is the story about...
The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles is a postmodern historical fiction that tells us the story of the aforementioned woman, abandoned by the French lieutenant who returned to France and married there. The woman named Sarah was left disgraced and shun from the society, spending most of her time on the beach and looking at the sea, grieving about her loss and shame. The story starts...
Most of people tend to believe they have never experienced the contemporary literature of Nordic countries until they realize that Stieg Larsson, who wrote the legendary “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo”, was Swedish. It is believed that the author wrote the book and especially its main character based on real life events. While we may question whether he really witnessed a...
Lois Lowry wrote “The Giver” in 1993. The next year this strong book received the highest award in the young adult literature field, the Newbery Medal. Born on Hawaii Island and educated at Brown and Maine, it’s hard to say where the author drew inspiration to write about such serious and solemn concepts. At the beginning of a book the reader finds himself in a utopian society...
Jeanette Walls managed to write a memoir that for more than 250 weeks was part of The New York Times Bestseller list. Since 2005 “The Glass Castle” sold millions of copies and even made it into a movie. The plot of the book is very non-trivial. It all begins with a 4-year old girl making herself sausages for breakfast. As a result of an accident, she ends up in the hospital...
“The Glass Menagerie” is a play that made Tennessee Williams famous immediately after its publication in 1944. The play made it to the Broadway and won numerous awards. The plot is very simple. Imagine a simple American family, it is the 1930s outside, the Great Depression seems never-ending, people are getting used to it. An energetic woman is keeping the whole family together. The...
The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck was a bestseller of its time and played a prominent part in getting its author the Nobel Prize for literature. A family drama set in China before the World War I, this book showed the readers the Chinese culture, struggles and hopes, their ideas and worldview. The popularity of the novel also helped Americans during the World War II see the Chinese people as allies...
Even though it wasn’t “The Grapes of Wrath” that won John Steinbeck his Novel Prize, it is still a very strong book of realist fiction genre in his portfolio. Published in 1939, the novel looks back at the Great Depression times and explores the travels of a poor farmer’s family looking for job and survival. The book begins with a story of Tom Joad who spent the...
“The Great Gatsby” is a novel by American writer Francis Scott Fitzgerald. The book depicts vividly the reality of social morals and economic standing in between the Roaring 20s and Great Depression times. In his early years, Fitzgerald was a smart child but couldn’t fight the boredom of school, which led to him dropping out and signing up for the army. Being a lieutenant in...