William B. Thesing, James Dickey s colleague at the University of South Carolina for twenty years, has a unique and complex perspective on the life and writing of this great twentieth-century American author. Dickey offers readers, students, and teachers a variety of energized and imaginative texts, and Thesing provides original and perceptive readings of his life and his novels as well as his most popular poems about animals in nature, man in nature, social and sexual relationships, women, and civilian and wartime death.
This is the only introductory teaching/study guide available on...

This is an introduction to the literature of contemporary American writer Clyde Edgerton. A North Carolina native, Edgerton has been compared to Mark Twain for his easy, humorous style, which is based in oral tradition. Like Twain and other humorous writers, Edgerton s work often contains both biting satire and exploration of very large questions about the human condition. The book contains an overview of each of his novels and his memoir in addition to offering critical commentary on theme, craft, and structure. Pedagogical support is offered with specific strategies that will encourage...

Our English classrooms are often only as vibrant as the literature that we teach. This book explores the writing of African American author Ralph Ellison, who offers readers and students engaging fiction and non-fiction that confront the reader and the world. Here, teachers will find an introduction to Ellison s works and an opportunity to explore how to bring them into the classroom as a part of the reading and writing curriculum. This book attempts to confront what we teach and how we teach as instructors of literature through the vivid texts Ellison offers his readers."

Howard Zinn is one of the most celebrated historians and social activists of our time. Raised in a working class family in Brooklyn, he was a shipyard worker and union organizer when World War II began. He served as a bombardier in the European Theatre and this experience shaped his opposition to war as an instrument of foreign policy. He became active in the civil rights movement as well as the anti-war movement from the 1950s to the 1970s. He is perhaps best known as the author of A People s History of the United States, published in 1980. This study of Zinn s life and work opens the...