To Kill a Mockingbird is a novel of such profound power that it has affected the lives of readers and left and indelible mark on American culture. This rich collection of historical documents, collateral readings, and commentary captures the essence of the novel's impact, making it an ideal resource for students, teachers, and library media specialists. Drawing on multi-disciplinary sources, the casebook places the issues of race, censorship, stereotyping, and heroism into sharp perspective. Through these documents, the reader also gains a taste for the historical events which influenced...

Since the time of its publication in 1884, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has generated heated controversy. One of the most frequently banned books in the history of literature, it raises issues of race relations, censorship, civil disobedience, and adolescent group psychology as relevant today as they were in the 1880s. This collection of historical documents, collateral readings, and commentary captures the stormy character of the slave-holding frontier on the eve of war and highlights the legacy of past conflicts in contemporary society. Among the source materials presented are:...

Sexual misconduct of society's leaders, the plight of single mothers, the separation of church and state -- all are burning issues of the 1990s which sparked outrage and controversy 150 years earlier in The Scarlet Letter. Now, no study of American history is complete without thorough examination of Nathaniel Hawthorne's timeless masterpiece. This multidisciplinary study of the novel contains historical documents, collateral readings, and commentary. In short, it is the ideal companion for students who wish to fully understand the novel in the context of its time, and to unlock its current...

Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl is the most widely read text about the Holocaust, yet it reveals only one example of the tragic consequences of the Nazi policy to eliminate the Jews. This casebook enriches Anne Frank's remarkable personal account with a variety of historical documents that illuminate the political and social context of anti-Semitism in Germany and the Holocaust. It includes an account of the Frank family's life in Germany before emigrating to Holland; first-person accounts of Anne's last seven months in deportation and concentration camps; other Holocaust...

The tragic love story of Romeo and Juliet has touched the hearts of young and old for nearly four hundred years. In this work, Alan Hager has compiled a rich collection of primary materials and contemporary ranging from information about the earliest performances of Romeo and Juliet to discussions of suicide in the 1990s. Designed to help students of the play, Understanding Romeo and Juliet highlights many different aspects of the play's context. Such aspects include a discussion about religions of love in the East and West, and examination of vendetta and collective...

This rich interdisciplinary collection of primary materials and commentary about Shakespeare's Macbeth will help student and teacher explore historical, literary, theatrical, social, and political issues related to the play. Bringing together past and present in its approach to Macbeth, the guide explores topics ranging from Shakespeare's stage to modern political events--from historical focus on the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 and its influence on the play, to theatrical interest in the stage and performance, to thematic connections between Macbeth and modern events such...

This lively gathering of materials about Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" will enrich students' understanding of the historical context of the play and encourage interpretations of its cultural meaning. Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" reflects perennial cultural concerns about order and freedom, particularly as they clash in the figures of Caesar and Brutus. This innovative experiment in Shakespeare literacy features a wide variety of materials--from a modernized text of Plutarch's lives of Caesar and Brutus set on facing pages for easy comparison, to historical and contemporary parodies, to a...

Shakespeare's "Hamlet," regarded by many as the world's most famous play by the world's most famous writer, is one of the most complex, demanding, discussed, and influential literary texts in English. As a means of access to this play, this unique collection of primary materials and commentary will help student and teacher explore historical, literary, theatrical, social, and cultural issues related to the play. In an approach unique for this series, Corum guides the reader through a literary analysis of Hamlet's options. He examines the popular theatres of the day in which Shakespeare and...

"A Tale of Two Cities," does not waste a word in telling a humanly touching, suspenseful tale against the background of one of the most bloody events in history, the French Revolution. This collection of historical documents, collateral readings, and commentary will promote interdisciplinary study of the novel and enrich the student's understanding of the French Revolution and the significant issues it raised. Newlin, the author of "Everyone in Dickens" and "Every Thing in Dickens," has assembled a rich variety of materials. These include excerpts from Thomas Carlyle's work, "The French...

More than one hundred years after being written, "Great Expectations" is still one of the most widely studied works of fiction. This casebook of historical documents, collateral readings and essays brings to life both Dickens' masterpiece and the social issues surrounding his work. The interdisciplinary approach offers students insight into the historically significant issues, such as child welfare, that ignited Dickens' creative and moral sensibilities. Newlin has unearthed significant documentation on the dilemma of Victorian women, supplying original social commentary such as Mary...