Introduction by Arnold Rampersad. Langston Hughes, born in 1902, came of age early in the 1920s. In The Big Sea he recounts those memorable years in the two great playgrounds of the decade--Harlem and Paris. In Paris he was a cook and waiter in nightclubs. He knew the musicians and dancers, the drunks and dope fiends. In Harlem he was a rising young poet--at the center of the "Harlem Renaissance." Arnold Rampersad writes in his incisive new introduction...

In 1898, dreams of love and success captivate the hearts and minds of the Stuart family Lylah, Amos, and Owen Stuart long for adventure. Coming from a large family with eight children, the three eldest of the Stuart clan want to spread their wings, leave their poverty-stricken home in the hills of Arkansas, and go in search of the American dream.

Fast-moving novel follows changes after World War I in the lives of the Stuart family. Their stories reflect the turbulence of 1920s America.

As the United States enters the war in Korea, the sons and daughters of Will and Marian Stuart live the good life until their hopes and dreams are shattered, leading them back to the family farm in Arkansas, where they find comfort and healing.

It is the tumultuous 1960s: Kennedy, Vietnam, the Civil Rights movement, and youth culture are on everyone's minds and lips. Prosperity and progress are undergirded with a sense of uneasiness for the Stuart family, along with the rest of the country. With a movie deal on the horizon, Bobby Stuart's star may be rising, but his descent into celebrity drug culture might be his undoing. And young love is blooming between two people who never expected...

The Magnificent Ambersons, by Booth Tarkington, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics: • New introductions commissioned from todays top writers and scholars • Biographies of the authors • Chronologies...

Recounts the story of Martin Eden, a young seaman struggling to obtain social and intellectual recognition as a writer.

Originally published in 1898. PREFACE: The definite object proposed in this work is an examination of the general history of Europe and America with particular reference to the effect of sea power upon the course of that history. Historians generally have been unfamiliar with the conditions of the sea, having as to it neither special interest nor special knowledge; and the profound determining influence of maritime strength upon great issues has consequently...

Bo Mason, his wife, Elsa, and their two boys live a transient life of poverty and despair. Drifting from town to town and from state ot state, the violent, ruthless Bo seeks out his fortune - in the hotel business, in new farmland, and, eventually, in illagal rumm-running through the treacherous back roads of the American Northwest.