Previously unpublished letters and diaries are used to portray the life of Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt and to assess the mark that she left as first lady.

Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best nonfiction books of all time

The Varieties of Religious Experience was an immediate bestseller upon its publication in June 1902. Reflecting the pluralistic views of psychologist turned philosopher William James, it posits that individual religious experiences, rather than the tenets of organized religions, form the backbone of religious life. James's discussion of conversion, repentance, mysticism, and hope of reward and fears of punishment in the hereafter--as well as his observations on the religious experiences of...

Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best nonfiction books of all time
In Up from Slavery, Washington recounts the story of his life--from slave to educator. The early sections deal with his upbringing as a slave and his efforts to get an education. Washington details his transition from student to teacher, and outlines his own development as an educator and founder of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. In the final chapters of Up From Slavery, Washington describes his career as a public speaker and civil rights activist.

Sixteen of the world's great women writers speak about their work, their colleagues, and their lives.

For More Than Forty Years, the acclaimed Paris Review interviews have been collected in the Writers at Work series. The Modern Library relaunches the series with the first of its specialized collections -- interviews with sixteen women novelists, poets, and playwrights, all offering rich commentary on the art of writing and on the opportunities and challenges a woman writer faces in contemporary society.

Why do people read science fiction? In hopes of receiving such writing as this a ravishingly accurate vision of things unseen; an utterly unexpected yet necessary beauty. So says Ursula K. Le Guin in her Introduction to The First Men in the Moon, H. G. Wells s 1901 tale of space travel. Heavily criticized upon publication for its fantastic ideas, it is now justly considered a science fiction classic.
Cavor, a brilliant scientist who accidentally produces a gravity-defying substance, builds a spaceship and, along with the materialistic Bedford, travels to the moon. The coldly...

Set during World War I on an isolated country estate just outside London, Rebecca West s haunting novel The Return of the Soldier follows Chris Baldry, a shell-shocked captain suffering from amnesia, as he makes a bittersweet homecoming to the three women who have helped shape his life. Will the devoted wife he can no longer recollect, the favorite cousin he remembers only as a childhood friend, and the poor innkeeper s daughter he once courted leave Chris to languish in a safe, dreamy past or will they help him recover his memory so that he can return to the front? The answer is...

Throughout America's history, our laws have been a reflection of who we are, of what we value, of who has control. They embody our society's genetic code. In the masterful hands of the subject's greatest living historian, the story of the evolution of our laws serves to lay bare the deciding struggles over power and justice that have shaped this country from its birth pangs to the present. Law in America is a supreme example of the historian's art, its brevity a testament to the great elegance and wit of its composition.

From the Hardcover edition.

"If I could write a story that would do for the Indian a thousandth part of what Uncle Tom's Cabin did for the Negro," wrote Helen Hunt Jackson, "I would be thankful the rest of my life." Jackson surpassed this ambition with the publication of Ramona, her popular 1884 romantic bestseller.

A beautiful half Native American, half-Scottish orphan raised by a harsh Mexican ranchera, Ramona enters into a forbidden love affair with a heroic Mission Indian named Alessandro. The pair's adventures after they elope paint a vivid portrait of California history and the woeful fate...

" Alger] was an utterly American artist . . . and the truth of his books is the truth of the power of the wish. . . . Alger was perhaps American capitalism's greatest and most effective propagandist."-Richard WrightIntroduction by David K. ShiplerWritten to inspire schoolboys to strive for "honesty, industry, frugality, and a worthy ambition," the novels of Horatio Alger (1832--99) are infused with great humanity, broad humor, and a surprisingly sophisticated view of Gilded Age propriety. Central to Alger's philosophy is the notion that heroes like Ragged Dick, a poor boot-black, manage to...

Were Thomas Jefferson alive to read this book, he would recognize every sentence, every elegant turn of phrase, every lofty, beautifully expressed idea. Indeed, every word in the book is his. In an astonishing feat of editing, Eric S. Petersen has culled the entirety of Thomas Jefferson s published works to fashion thirty-four original essays on themes ranging from patriotism and liberty to hope, humility, and gratitude. The result is a lucid, inspiring distillation of the wisdom of one of America s greatest political thinkers.
From his personal motto Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to...