Norman Dietz
4) The Odyssey
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"When Robert Fagles' translation of the Iliad was published in 1990, critics and scholars alike hailed it as a masterpiece." "Now Robert Fagles presents us with the Odyssey, Homer's best-loved and most accessible poem, recounting the arduous wanderings of Odysseus during his ten-year voyage home to Ithaca, after the Trojan War. If the Iliad is the world's greatest war story, then the Odyssey is literature's grandest evocation of everyman's journey...
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"Mark Twain's classic The Adventures of Tom Sawyer has been enjoyed by generations of readers across the world since its publication in 1876. With its humorous glimpses into life in nineteenth-century, small-town America, this novel has provided unique social commentary that continues to be discussed in classrooms today. Tom Sawyer, a mischievous boy growing up in the fictional town of St. Petersburg, Missouri, is constantly getting in and out of...
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Called "the veriest trash" by a member of the Concord, Massachusetts Library Board that banned the novel when it was first published, Huckleberry Finn has come to be viewed, as H.L. Mencken put it, as "one of the great masterpieces of the world." Ernest Hemingway wrote that "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn....There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since." A daringly ironic...
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Drawing on thousands of government documents and personal letters, featuring original maps and over sixty photographs, this book reconstructs the diverse and remarkable ways in which Americans have interacted with this alluring yet often hostile land stretching from Morocco to Iran, from the Persian Gulf to the Bosporus.--From publisher description.
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Drawing on both native and Spanish chronicles, the author describes the story of the conquest of the largest native empire of the New World. Describes the story of the modern search for Vilcabamba, how Machu Picchu was discovered, and how a trio of American explorers only recently discovered the lost Inca capital of Vilcabamba.
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Joshua Arnold and his mother move to their summer home in Corazon Sagrado, New Mexico, when Joshua's father joins the Navy during World War II. Joshua copes with the Mexican and Anglo customs and is concerned with his mother's drinking. When his father dies in the war, he takes responsibility for his mother, his own life, and his father's business.
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Set before the Civil War, in the first half of the nineteenth century, this novel of Mark Twain's delves into the ironies of racial prejudice. A young would-be lawyer, Wilson, sets out to solve a murder using the (at that time) unproven method of fingerprinting. Thought to be a simpleton or 'puddenhead', he eventually makes his critics look like puddenheads themselves. The main focus of the novel, however, deals with the identities of two young...
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Harmony series (Philip Gulley) volume 2
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Follows the residents of the small town of Harmony, including pastor Sam Gardner, through various crises of faith and relationship.
12) Baseball pals
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When Jimmie is elected captain of his baseball team, his first decision is to appoint himself pitcher. But Jimmie's selfish move could ruin the whole team...
13) James Madison
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An examination of the life of President James Madison and his influence on America.
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[2007]
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On April 18, 1775, a riot over the price of flour broke out in the French city of Dijon. That night, across the Atlantic, Paul Revere mounted the fastest horse he could find and kicked it into a gallop. So began what have been called the "sister revolutions" of France and America. In a single, thrilling narrative, this book tells the story of those revolutions and shows just how deeply intertwined they actually were.
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p2016
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John F. Kennedy was the first president since the 1920s to slash tax rates across-the-board. One person who followed JFK's tax-cut growth model was Ronald Reagan. The never before told story is the link between JFK and Ronald Reagan. This is the secret history of American prosperity.
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2017
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Chip Chippendale met Ransom Barnes after the War Between the States, when the two cowboys drove a herd up from Texas together. But when Chip first laid eyes on Wyoming, he knew he was home, and the two friends split off on different trails. Each man went on to own his own ranch, but when Ransom's home is attacked and burned by a marauding band of Cheyenne warriors, he is faced with ruin--and makes matters worse by gunning down the Cheyenne leader's...
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2015
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The final story collection from “one of the great short story writers of our time” (The Philadelphia Inquirer) features classic stories from Cathedral, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, and earlier volumes. • “Among the masterpieces of American fiction." —The New York Times Book Review
By the time of his early death in 1988, Raymond Carver had established himself as one of the...
By the time of his early death in 1988, Raymond Carver had established himself as one of the...
19) The rifle
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A priceless, handcrafted rifle, fired throughout the American Revolution, is passed down through the years until it fires on a fateful Christmas Eve of 1994.
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Fashioned from the same experiences that would inspire the masterpiece "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn", "Life on the Mississippi" is Mark Twain's most brilliant and most personal nonfictional work. It is at once an affectionate evocation of the vital river life in the steamboat era and a melancholy reminiscence of its passing after the Civil War. A priceless collection of of humorous anecodotes and folktales, and a unique glimpse into Twain's...