Comprising over 750 entries in a single alphabetical sequence, the Cambridge Handbook of American Literature offers a compact and accessible guide to the major landmarks of American literature from colonial times to the present day. Entries on 500 separate authors, from Henry Adams to Louis Zukofsky, from Cotton Mather to Norman Mailer, give a full account of the subject's literary career. Entries on individual works - on major novels, plays, and volumes of poetry, from Absalom, Absalom! to The Zoo Story, from Moby-Dick to Catch-22, provide publication details and convenient plot summaries. There are entries also on the principal literary magazines past and present, and on literary movements as diverse as Transcendentalism and the Beats. There are helpful guides to further reading and chronological tables of American history and literature. Containing a wealth of authoritative, clearly presented information on the whole range of the American literary heritage, this is an invaluable ref
First published in 1951, Catcher in the Rye continues to be one of the most popular novels ever written as well as one of the most frequently banned books in the United States. In his introduction to this volume, Jack Salzman discusses the history of the novel's composition and publication, the mixed reception it received from critics and scholars, the arguments surrounding the attempts at censorship, and its position in a postmodernist literary world. The five essays that follow focus on various aspects of the novel: its ideology within the context of the Cold War, its portrait of a particular subculture within American society, its account of patterns of adolescent crisis, and its rich and complex narrative structure.
The Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History set and its Supplement are the basis for this new student set. Designed as a curriculum-related reference source, the 4-vol. set covers the Afr
Twenty-one essays by leading black and Jewish writers offers a wide-ranging look at the history of Black-Jewish relations from the Middle Ages to the present, including such issues as Zionism, affirma
A look at how African Americans and Jews have related to each other during the past century examines the links between the two groups in light of each one's cultural identity and experiences of margin
