" ... Tells the story of Franklin's life from his humble beginnings to his emergence as a leading figure in the American colonies. In the process, it creates a portrait of Franklin as the quintessential American. Because of the book, Franklin became a role model for future generations of Americans, who hoped to emulate his rags-to-riches story. The Autobiography has also become one of the central works not just for understanding Franklin but for understanding...

The Last of the Mohicans is the second and most popular of James Fenimore Cooper's five Leatherstocking Tales. Set in 1757 during the fierce French and Indian wars, Cooper's classic novel of adventure follows an adroit scout and his companion as they weave through the lush and spectacular wilderness of upstate New York, fighting to save the beautiful daughters of a fort commander from a treacherous Huron renegade. With its death-defying chases and...

"On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below." With this celebrated sentence, Thornton Wilder begins The Bridge of San Luis Rey, one of the towering achievements in American fiction and a novel read throughout the world. By chance, a monk witnesses the tragedy. Brother Juniper seeks to prove that it was divine intervention rather than chance that led to the deaths...