John Lloyd, John Mitchinson, James Harkin

Did you know? • Cows moo in regional accents.• The international dialing code for Russia is 007.• The water in the mouth of a blue whale weighs more than its body.• Pants are responsible for twice as many accidents as chain saws.• Saddam Hussein's bunker was designed by... Read More

Andre Dubus III

In these linked novellas in which characters walk out the back door of one story and into the next, love is "dirty"—tangled up with need, power, boredom, ego, fear, and fantasy. On the Massachusetts coast north of Boston, a controlling manager, Mark, discovers his... Read More

Graham Robb

Fifty generations ago the cultural empire of the Celts stretched from the Black Sea to Ireland and the Highlands of Scotland. In six hundred years, the Celts had produced some of the finest artistic and scientific masterpieces of the ancient world. In 58 BC, Julius Caesar... Read More

Joe Sacco, Adam Hochschild

Launched on July 1, 1916, the Battle of the Somme has come to epitomize the madness of the First World War. Almost 20,000 British soldiers were killed and another 40,000 were wounded that first day, and there were more than one million casualties by the time the offensive... Read More

Mary Roach

“America’s funniest science writer” (Washington Post) takes us down the hatch on an unforgettable tour. The alimentary canal is classic Mary Roach terrain: the questions explored in Gulp are as taboo, in their way, as the cadavers in Stiff and every bit as... Read More

Ann Hood

“The impressive collection of writers here have contributed essays that celebrate knitting and knitters. They share their knitting triumphs and disasters as well as their life triumphs and disasters. . . . These essays will break your heart. They will have you... Read More

Stephen Greenblatt, Carol T. Christ, Alfred David, Barbara K. Lewalski, Lawrence Lipking, George M. Logan, Deidre Shauna Lynch, Katharine Eisaman Maus, James Noggle, Jahan Ramazani, Catherine Robson, James Simpson, Jon Stallworthy, Jack Stillinger, M. H. Abrams

The Ninth Edition offers more complete works and more teachable groupings than ever before, the apparatus you trust, and a new, free Supplemental Ebook with more than 1,000 additional texts. Read by more than 8 million students, The Norton Anthology of English Literature... Read More

Martin Puchner, Suzanne Conklin Akbari, Wiebke Denecke, Vinay Dharwadker, Barbara Fuchs, Caroline Levine, Pericles Lewis, Emily Wilson

Read by millions of students since its first publication, The Norton Anthology of World Literature remains the most-trusted anthology of world literature available. Guided by the advice of more than 500 teachers of world literature and a panel of regional specialists, the... Read More

Tom Nissley, Joanna Neborsky

At once a love letter to literature and a charming guide to the books most worth reading, A Reader's Book of Days features bite-size accounts of events in the lives of great authors for every day of the year. Here is Marcel Proust starting In Search of Lost Time and... Read More

Kerry Ferris, Jill Stein

The Real World succeeds in classrooms, because it focuses on the perspective that students care about most—their own. In every chapter, the authors use activities, examples from everyday life, and popular culture to draw students into thinking sociologically and to make... Read More

Charles Palliser

Charles Palliser’s work has been hailed as “so compulsively absorbing that reality disappears” (New York Times). Since his extraordinary debut, The Quincunx, his works have sold over one million copies worldwide. With his new novel, Rustication, he... Read More

Lucy Lethbridge

From the immense staff running a lavish Edwardian estate and the lonely maid-of-all-work cooking in a cramped middle-class house to the poor child doing chores in a slightly less poor household, servants were essential to the British way of life. They were hired not only... Read More