Edgar Allan Poe's gift for the macabre-his genius in finding the strangeness lurking at the heart of things-was so extraordinary that he exerted a major influence on Baudelaire and French symbolism, on Freudian analysis, and also on the detective novel and the Hollywood movie. His psychologically profound stories of encounters with the marvelous, the uncanny, and the dreadful represent-in contrast to the optimism of writers like Emerson and Whitman-the other, darker side of the nineteenth-century American sensibility.
(Jacket Status: Jacketed)

The Call of the Wild is Now a Major Motion Picture Starring Harrison Ford! Timeless tales of wolves, dogs, men, and the Wild, The Call of the Wild and White Fang are two of the world's greatest adventure stories. The biting cold and the aching silence of the far North become an unforgettable backdrop for Jack London's vivid, rousing, superbly realistic wilderness classics. The Call of the Wild features a gentle domestic dog driven by the cruelty of man to abandon civilization and return to the wilderness. By contrast, White Fang tells the story of a magnificent wolf dog born wild and free who struggles to survive and is transformed from a ferocious beast to a "blessed wolf," capable of great, uncompromising love. Each novel is filled with action and suspense. But what makes The Call of the Wild and White Fang two masterpieces of American literature is Jack London's special knowledge of the Yukon and of the behavior of humans facing nature at its cruelest, the fascinating lore of the wolf pack, and the ways of the Wild itself. With an Introduction by John Seelye And an Afterword by Michael Meyer

Like most ten-year-old boys, Jody Tiflin has the urge for rebellion as well as the need to be loved. In these stories, Jody begins to learn about adulthood - its pains, its responsibilities and its problems - through his acceptance of his father's gifts. First he is given a red pony and later he is promised the colt of a bay mare. Yet both of these gifts bring tragedy as well as joy, and Jody is taught not only the harsh lessons of life and death, but made painfully aware of the fallibility of adults.

Long celebrated as a symbol of the country's origins, Plymouth Rock no longer receives much national attention. In fact, historians now generally agree that the Pilgrims' storied landing on the Rock never actually took place--the tradition having emerged more than a century after the arrival of the Mayflower. In Memory's Nation, however, John Seelye is not interested in the factual truth of the landing. He argues that what truly gives Plymouth Rock its significance is more than two centuries of oratorical, literary, and artistic celebrations of the Pilgrims' arrival. Seelye traces how different political, religious, and social groups used the image of the Rock on behalf of their own specific causes and ideologies. Drawing on a wealth of speeches, paintings, and popular illustrations, he shows how Plymouth Rock changed in meaning over the years, beginning as a symbol of freedom evoked in patriotic sermons at the start of the Revolution and eventually becoming an icon of exclusion during the 1920s. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

Winky thought he'd seen everything in Wyoming Territory: rustlers, hangings, shoot-outs, cattle standing frozen stiff in the snow. Then into town one lazy day rode a long-haired kid and a colossal African mute.

They were met in the saloon by Fiddler Jones, whose hair and temper flared like a wasps' nest. Fiddler's yellow eyes fell instantly in love with the kid's pouch of gold dust. That pouch was worth killing for.

Fiddler was no stranger to trouble, but the trouble he found in the kid and the mute took everyone by surprise. It just kept coming, like nothing Winky had ever seen before.

The first published book by the creator of "Tarzan of the Apes"

Two years before Edgar Rice Burroughs became a worldwide celebrity with the publication of "Tarzan of the Apes" and its twenty-two sequels, which together have sold more than 30 million copies, he published "A Princess of Mars." A futuristic sci-fi fantasy romance, "A Princess of Mars" tells the story of John Carter, a Civil War veteran who inexplicably finds himself held prisoner on the planet Mars by the Green Men of Thark. Together with Dejah Thoris, the princess of another clan on Mars, the unlikely pair must fight for their freedom and save the entire planet from destruction as the life-sustaining Atmosphere Factory slowly grinds to a halt.