The Right Stuff
1979, Tom Wolfe
Seven pilots scale the ziggurat of manliness on the quest to be America’s space heroes.
The Romance of Tristan and Iseult
(Le Roman de Tristan et Iseut)
1900, Joseph Bédier
A knight and a lady pursue their magical love through bloodshed and sorrow.
A Sand County Almanac
1949, Aldo Leopold
An ecologist contemplates and celebrates the land, and recommends an expansion of our moral world.
The Scarlet Pimpernel
1905, Baroness Emmuska Orczy
A master of disguise rescues French aristocrats from the guillotine and drops them safely into London society—until a sly French inspector tracks him down.
The Song of Roland
(La Chanson de Roland)
late 11th century, anonymous (Turold?)
The mightiest and noblest of Charlemagne’s crusading knights is betrayed, but his companions stand fiercely by him as the Saracens attack.
Songs and Sonets
d.1631, John Donne
An earthy, imaginative, thoughtful soul reveals his view of love, steeped in metaphor and emotion.
The Time Machine
1895, H. G. Wells
A push on a lever, a blurry dizziness, a clap of thunder… and a veil falls away to reveal the world of our far distant descendants.
Tom Jones
1749, Henry Fielding
Tom really wants to be good for the sake of his love Sophia, but his nature keeps getting in the way!
The Travels
1299, Marco Polo (with Rustichello of Pisa)
An Italian explorer treks fearlessly into the unknown East, and discovers astonishing cultures and kingdoms no European had ever seen.
This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.
