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Slaughterhouse-Five
Kurt Vonnegut
James Mustich
Many thousands died when Allied planes firebombed Dresden, Germany, in February 1945. Kurt Vonnegut, an American soldier being held there as a prisoner of war, survived because he was confined to Schlachthof-fünf—slaughterhouse number five, an airtight, impregnable underground meat locker. When the ...show more
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Beloved
Toni Morrison
Set in post-Civil War Ohio, but crisscrossing time and space in an intricate series of flashbacks and shifting perspectives, Beloved tells the story of Sethe, a runaway slave raising the children she led out of Kentucky. She is tormented by what she has escaped and haunted by what she cannot: the me...show more
1984
George Orwell
Even now, six decades after it was written and more than a quarter century after its titular year has come and gone, 1984 continues to haunt us with its aura of pernicious possibility. Orwell’s warning of a spiritless, totalitarian time to come has lost none of its relevance. It would be hard to nam...show more
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austen
The best introduction to Austen’s work is surely the second of the six novels she wrote before her death at only forty-one, Pride and Prejudice, in which she introduces us to Elizabeth Bennet, the wittiest and most vivacious of five sisters on the hunt—if their mother has her way, at least—for husba...show more
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Maya Angelou
When you discover that a person has written six books of autobiography, you’re bound to wonder: Is she just a prolific narcissist, or has she really lived a six-volume life? If she’s Maya Angelou, there’s no doubt that the latter is the case: So compelling is her private story, so extravagant her pu...show more
To Kill a Mockingbird
Harper Lee
The Prince
Niccolò Machiavelli
Published five years after its author’s death, The Prince advanced a revolutionary theory of statecraft. The traditional view of governance held that a ruler earned the respect and obedience of his subjects by ruling virtuously. But the principle at the heart of The Prince is that virtue as such has...show more
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Hunter S. Thompson
Whacked out and drug crazed; riotous and exuberant; immature and irresponsible; brilliantly original and more than a little insane, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas chronicles the “bad craziness” that overtook Hunter S. Thompson and a sidekick on a journalistic assignment in 1971. It’s a book of headl...show more