So begins The War of the Worlds, the science fiction classic that first proposed the possibility of intelligent life on other planets and has enthralled readers for generations. This compelling tale describes the Martian invasion of earth. When huge, tireless creatures land in England, complete chaos erupts. Using their fiery heat rays and crushing strength, the aliens just may succeed in...

This is the main collection of poems by Walt Whitman, the outstanding American classic of the nineteenth century and the progenitor of free verse and a humanist. Whitman supplemented and reissued the collection throughout his life. The poems are presented in classic translations by true masters of the word: Korney Chukovsky, Samuel Marshak, and Mikhail Zenkevich.

In this landmark account, renowned historian Barbara W. Tuchman re-creates the first month of World War I: thirty days in the summer of 1914 that determined the course of the conflict, the century, and ultimately our present world. Beginning with the funeral of Edward VII, Tuchman traces each step that led to the inevitable clash. And inevitable it was, with all sides plotting their war for...

First published in Rolling Stone magazine in 1971, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is the best chronicle of drug-soaked, addle-brained, rollicking good times ever committed to the printed page. It is also the tale of a long weekend road trip that has gone down in the annals of American pop culture as one of the strangest journeys ever experienced. The writer’s account of an assignment he...

‘The Headless Horseman.’ A gem of Mayne Reid's literary legacy. The captivating story of the beautiful Louise Poindexter and the noble Irishman Maurice Gerald, the proud Mexican woman Isidora Covarrubio, the cruel Captain Cassius Calhoun, the brave hunter Zeb Stump, and the dashing bandit El Coyote is considered a true masterpiece of adventure prose and is endlessly loved by both foreign and...

‘Fight Club’ is Chuck Palahniuk's most famous novel. Everyone remembers the film directed by David Fincher, starring Brad Pitt, right? It's based on this book. It's a challenging novel, a novel created in defiance of everything and everyone, describing a generation of embittered people who have lost their sense of right and wrong, of good and evil, who they are themselves and who surrounds...

For all fans of Japanese culture. — A collection of folk tales, myths, and legends. — For those who have already read ‘Tales of Ancient Japan’ and ‘Ten Evenings’.

This collection of Japanese folk tales is translated by the renowned scholar of Japanese literature, Vera Nikolaevna Markova. It includes a preface and commentary by the translator. The tales presented in this collection tell of cunning pranks and mythical feats, of the struggle between good and evil and the triumph of justice, of the magical deeds of a wondrous wife, and of the cruel war...

The Epic of Gilgamesh is one of the oldest works of fiction, written long before Homer's ‘Iliad’ and ‘Odyssey,’ the greatest literary masterpiece of the Ancient East, which for the first time describes the myth of the Great Flood. The reader is presented with the story of the glorious deeds of the demigod king-warrior Gilgamesh (whose image is based on a real historical figure, Bilgames, the...

Why did European, and later Euro-Atlantic, civilizations achieve the most spectacular successes in the history of mankind? Why was it Europe, first independently and later together with the United States of America, that created the world in which we live today? What predetermined the global hegemony of the European worldview – industry, military power, or something else? And what influence...

When Theodore Dreiser's epic first novel stormed onto the literary scene in 1900, it was a breath of fresh air in more ways than one. Celebrated for the vibrant and gritty realism of its portrayal of city life, Sister Carrie also gave the world an unforgettable heroine—a thoroughly modern young woman who turned the traditional cautionary tale of the fallen woman on its head.

Nietzsche's mature masterpiece, Beyond Good and Evil considers the origins and nature of Judeo-Christian morality; the end of philosophical dogmatism and beginning of perspectivism; the questionable virtues of science and scholarship; liberal democracy, nationalism, and women's emancipation.