Few works in literature have received as much popular and critical attention as Nobel Laureate William Golding's Lord of the Flies. Since its publication in 1954, it has amassed a cult following, and has significantly contributed to our dystopian vision of the post-war era. When responding to the novel's dazzling power of intellectual insight, scholars and critics often invoke the works of Shakespeare, Freud, Rousseau, Sartre, Orwell, and Conrad....

"Homer and his close buddies, who call themselves the Rocket Boys, are high school seniors in 1959. Their rocket building experiments amaze the locals, thanks to top-quality moonshine for fuel, 'liberated' materials, and Homer's self-taught understanding of higher math. But no matter how brilliant their experiments are, they can do little to help preserve Coalwood's way of life. With the coal mine on its last legs, prospects for the town are unpredictable...

This memoir is about Clancy Sigal's boyhood in Depression-era Chicago, then James Farrell and Nelson Algren territory. The author recounts his intense relationship with his mother Jennie, a sometime firebrand union organizer, and his roaring Oedipal rivalry with his mostly absent father Leo. Jennie is a single mother on welfare trying to raise a wild rebellious son in a twilight world between law and lawlessness. She is defiant, vulnerable, sexually...

A new way of seeing life and money High school's over. We're no longer the nerd, the athlete, the princess or the bad boy. Instead, we are the parent, worker, wife, husband, daughter or son. But we all have things in common - and one of them is money. People have always sought financial freedom, but our influences, from our parents to our community, have made our grounding in money anything but helpful. In fact, that grounding might be the thing that...