The only constants in nature are change and death. Terry Tempest Williams, a naturalist and writer from northern Utah, has seen her share of both. The pages of Refuge resound with the deaths of her mother and grandmother and other women from cancer, the result of the American government's ongoing nuclear-weapons tests in the nearby Nevada desert.
This short story from Joseph Conrad is among his best. The man's head and shoulders emerged above the deck, over which were scattered various tools of his trade and a few pieces of machinery. He was doing some repairs to the engines. At the sound of our footsteps he raised anxiously a grimy face with a pointed chin and a tiny fair moustache. What could be seen of his delicate features under the black smudges appeared to me wasted and livid in the greenish shade of the enormous tree spreading its foliage over the launch moored close to the bank.
Upton Sinclair's The Jungle not only drew attention from the likes of Winston Churchill and President Theodore Roosevelt—it drew action. The novel's depiction of what takes place in a meat-processing plant pressed the U.S. government into taking steps to regulate the industry. Examine the work with this text.
Raphael Taylor's life seems marked for greatness until his exposure to a world of hedonistic pleasure by college roommate Damon Flood culminates in an accident that leaves him physically and emotionally shattered. Raphael's struggle to rebuild his self-esteem in a society where government assistance programs encourage a loser mentality is the focus of Eddings's latest foray into mainstream fiction.
Archie Goodwin has his hands full when three baffling murders make him the recipient of a poisonous lunch, the fall guy for a beautiful woman, and the target of the U.S. Federal Government.
