Literary Collections

Every fall, marching bands take to the field in a uniquely American ritual. From the stands, it looks easy. You don’t see them sweat. For millions of kids, band is more than a show. It’s a rite of passage—a first foray into leadership and adult responsibility, and a chance to learn what it means to be part of a community. Nowhere is band more serious than at Concord High School in Elkhart, Indiana, where the entire town is involved with the success of its defending state champion band, the Marching Minutemen. In the place where this tradition may have originated, in the city that became the band instrument capital of the world, band is a religion. But it’s not the only religion, as director Max Jones discovers. After four decades, Jones’s single-minded devotion to musical excellence has fallen out of step with a younger generation increasingly focused on personal salvation. In what his students do not know is his final season of directing, he has assembled his most ambitious show ever, for the strongest senior class he has ever directed. Amid conflicting notions of greatness, the band marches through a season that starts in hope and promise, progresses through uncertainty and disappointment, and ends, ultimately, in redemption. AMERICAN BAND is an unusually intimate chronicle of life, in all its triumph, disappointment, and drama, in the kind of community in which most of America lives. It is an especially timely portrait, capturing as it does the spirit of the heartland at a time of profound change. If you have ever been—or yearned to be—part of something bigger than yourself, you will be rooting for the kids whose voices fill this book. more...

Price: $26.00

Andrew M. Stauffer explores the changing place of anger in the literature and culture of the Romantic period, particularly in the poetry and prose of Blake, Coleridge, Godwin, Shelley, and Byron. This innovative book has much to contribute to the understanding of Romantic literature and the cultural history of emotions. more...

Price: $68.00

Annie Dillard -- "one of the most distinctive voices in American letters today" ( Boston Globe ) -- collects her favorite selections from her own writings in this compact volume. A perfect introduction to one of America's most acclaimed and bestselling authors. more...

Price: $12.95

It was written to fight the licensing of publications then required in Britain (and was published without a license, in defiance of the law of the time). Many of its points are still revelant today as governments decide whether they should restrict the press on the Internet. more...

Price: $3.99

The first and only collection of unpublished works by Kurt Vonnegut since his death is a fitting tribute to the author and an essential contribution to the discussion of war, peace, and humanity's tendency toward violence. more...

Price: $24.95