Meet Julian West, who falls asleep in Boston for over a hundred years... then wakes to find himself in a futuristic socialist utopia, where people retire at 45 to live out the rest of their lives in leisure. His guide in this brave new America is Doctor Leete, with whom he discusses the wonders he encounters and the perils he envisions. These social-minded dialogues range from discussing religion, an improved legal system and class equality, to the use of credit cards, overnight deliveries, and the dangers of the stock market.

Edward Bellamy wrote "Looking Backward" in 1887, and...

Gertrude Stein was at heart an artist's writer. She became well-known to the literary mainstream with "The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas," and was at her most accessible with her speech and autobiographical writing of her later years. It is with collections such as "Geography and Plays," however, that Stein showcased the possibilities of the English language to transcend beyond literature into the realm of modern art. The page was her canvas, and as the Cubist painters of her time treated their subjects, Stein re-assembled words in an abstracted form to present them in a greater context, a...

Once considered a writer of "slick" magazine stories intended for mass consumption, F. Scott Fitzgerald is now regarded as one of the finest literary craftsmen of his, or of any other, generation. Entrenched in the milieu of the reckless 1920's, his stories reflect the carefree, impetuous attitude of the time, but they also go far beyond providing a mere snapshot of a generation. Fitzgerald established himself as a master at entwining romanticism with realism. He dissected class differences with a surgeon's precision. He exalted the Jazz Age fantasy of glorious excess even as he tore it...

Women on the Verge: American Women's Literature of the Progressive Era presents a scholarly selection of some of the finest examples of Women's Literature from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, now known as The Progressive Era. Following the Victorian era, and on the heels of the twilight of the dominance of New England writers in American literature, Progressive era American women authors were starting to find their literary voices, unique from the rest of the world. Edited by Laura Bonds and Shawn Conners, and with cover art by Joan Turrell based on her series "Beyond the Yellow...