Author Gary Paulsen relates tales from his youth in a small town in northwestern Minnesota in the late 1940s and early 1950s, such as skiing behind a souped-up car and imitating daredevil Evel Knievel.

Complete in one volume with 1300 biographies and 400 portraits.

A collection of poetry captures the pain and triumph of being black and tells of history and heartbreak and love.

A critical interpretation of Crane and his work.

"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...

Born to a family of powerful witch doctors, Arrah yearns for magic of her own. But she fails to read the bones, fails to see the future, and fails to call upon the ancestors. With each passing year, her ambitious mother looks upon her with ever-growing disapproval. There is only one thing Arrah hasn't tried. Charlatans in the market trade years of their own lives for a taste of magic without knowing how many each ritual will take. That is a sacrifice...

First published in 1975, Shange's choreopoem has been read and performed because it truly revealed what it meant to be of color and female in the twentieth century. Here is the complete text, with stage directions of the dramatic prose poem that resonates with unusual beauty in its fierce message to the world.

The Greater Journey is the enthralling, inspiring-and until now, untold-story of the adventurous American artists, writers, doctors, politicians, architects, and others of high aspiration who set off for Paris in the years between 1830 and 1900, ambitious to excel in their work.

An exuberant account of Zora Neale Hurston's rise from poverty in the rural south to a prominent place among the leading artists and intelectuals of the Harlem Renaissance.