* All the Kings Men
Robert Penn Warren

Summary:  Story of the rise and fall of a Southern demagogue explores the inevitable clash between ideals and political realities and exposes the corrupting nature of power.

Anne Frank Remembered
Miep Gies

Summary:   This is the story of Miep Gies,  the woman who bravely served as the Franks' mainstay as they hid, even though she expected certain death if caught. Although the Franks were eventually found and arrested, Miep fortunately was not taken, and she saved Anne's diary, as a message for posterity.

* Farewell to Arms  ^
Ernest Hemingway

Summary:  Is the story of a young American named Frederic Henry who volunteers for service with the Italian army in World War I and falls in love with his English nurse, and  he deserts from the retreating Italian front. Having escaped to Switzerland, they live in harmony until the tragic end of her pregnancy, during which both she and the child die

* The Joy Luck Club **  ^
Amy Tan

Summary:  "It is the story of four Chinese-immigrant women and their American-born daughters. Each of the Chinese women has her own view of the world based on her experiences in China and wants to share that vision with her daughter. The daughters try to understand and appreciate their mothers' pasts, adapt to the American way of life, and win their mothers' acceptance."

*The Jungle   **  ^
Upton Sinclair

Summary:   Describes the conditions of the Chicago stockyards through the eyes of a young immigrant struggling in America

* Light in August
William Faulkner

Summary:  Set in the  imaginary landscape of Yoknapatawpha County during Prohibition, the lives of a  band of strangers, outcasts and loners become inexplicably intertwined. At the center of the drama are two characters: the unwed and pregnant Lena Grove, who has come to Yoknapatawpha County in search of the father of her child; and Joe Christmas, a man so tormented by the question of his mixed-race parentage that his personal demons infect the entire town. As the characters wrestle with their own troubled relationships, they will be forced to confront their own mortality and find their source of hope.

Summary:  A young African-American man trapped in the poverty-stricken ghetto of Chicago's South Side accidentally kills a rich white girl and finds himself on a path to self-destruction.

Summary:  Lucy Marsden's testament of her Civil War days includes a three-way love story, an eccentric small-town family, accounts of combat, and the price she paid--the lives of her nine children and the freedom of her best friend.

Summary:  A young seaman joins the crew of the whaling ship Pequod, led by the fanatical Captain Ahab in pursuit of the white whale, Moby Dick.

Summary:  Nathan Price and his family move to the Belgian Congo in 1959, and the experiences they have while living in Africa affect each member of the family in a different way.
 

Summary:  Follows the life of Macon Dead, Jr., the son of the richest black family in a Midwestern town, as he leaves home on a quest for personal freedom.

Summary: The story of a group of American and English expatriates on an excursion from Paris's Left Bank to Pamplona for the July fiesta and its climatic bull fight, a journey from the center of a civilization spiritually bankrupted by the First World War to a vital, God-haunted world in which faith and hnor have yet to lose their currency, the novel captured the spirit of the "Lost Generation."

Summary:  Tobias Wolff's account of his boyhood and the process of growing up includes paper routes, whiskey, scouting, fistfights, friendship, and betrayal in 1950s America.