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The Confessions of Nat Turner
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| Creator(s): |
William Styron |
| Publisher: |
RosettaBooks |
| Subject(s): |
Classic Literature, History, Human Rights |
| Language(s): |
English |
Description:
Few modern American novelists have dared as much as William Styron in writing The Confessions of Nat Turner. A white man and a Tidewater Virginian by birth, Styron put himself inside the life and mind of Nat Turner, the black man who led a slave rebellion in Virginia in 1831. It is a true story told as a novel, though the author prefers to call it "a meditation on history" rather than a historical novel. Many black critics scorned it when it was published, refusing to accept Styron's bold conceit, though the novel won the 1967 Pulitzer Prize in fiction and was one of the most acclaimed American novels of its time. The Confessions of Nat Turner speaks in the first-person voice of Nat Turner himself. Styron based the novel on details of Turner's life and a pamphlet with the same title that was presented as evidence in Turner's trial. It is a shattering story that renders the horror of slavery -- so easily viewed as a faceless historical tragedy -- into unique human terms. Turner had been promised freedom by his first master but it was never granted, a taste of liberty that is unbearable in its cruelty. As a man, he can find no solace in the life that is given to him. Turner is a powerful, compelling figure, and with visions tormenting him, he inspires a small band of slaves to rise up against their masters. The rebellion is violent, resulting in the deaths of white men and women, but it is put down surely and bloodily, with an even higher casualty of black people. The fate of the rebels is inevitable, and it is from this perspective that Nat Turner seeks to understand his life. The concentrated but extravagant richness of Styron's writing, with its high rhetorical grace, is another bold choice he made in writing The Confessions of Nat Turner, at a time when writers were embracing the idea of less being more. As in his later novel Sophie's Choice, he does not tell a story that exists only in the past. Written in the mid-1960s, this novel addresses the horrible inequities that still existed then in the lives of African-Americans, and what those inequities do to the human equation. "He has begun the common history -- ours," the novelist James Baldwin wrote when The Confessions of Nat Turner was published. |
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The Playground
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| Creator(s): |
Ray Bradbury |
| Publisher: |
RosettaBooks |
| Subject(s): |
Science Fiction & Fantasy |
| Language(s): |
English |
Description:
Charles Underhill, a widower, would do anything to protect his young son Jim from the horrors of the playground...a playground which he and the boy pass daily and whose tumult and activity brings back to him the anguish of his own childhood. The playground like childhood itself is a nightmare of torment and vulnerability; his sensitive son, he fears, will be destroyed there just as it almost happened to him, so many years ago. Underhill's sister, Carol - who after his wife's death has moved in to help raise the boy - feels differently: the Playground is preparation for life, Jim will survive the experience and be the better for it, more equipped to deal with the rigor and obligation of adult existence. Underhill, caught between his own fear and his sister's invocation of reason, does not know what to do. A mysterious boy in the playground calls out to him, seems to know all too well why Underhill is there, what the source of Underhill's agony really is. Also lurking is a mysterious Manager to whom this strange boy directs Underhill. An agreement can be made, perhaps, the boy says. Perhaps Jim can be spared the Playground. Of course, a substitute must be found... |
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Red Alert
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| Creator(s): |
Peter Bryant |
| Publisher: |
RosettaBooks |
| Subject(s): |
Classic Literature, Fiction, Suspense |
| Language(s): |
English |
Description:
It was the worst of all possible worst-case scenarios in the Cold War - an American general loses his reason and orders a full-scale nuclear attack on the U.S.S.R. From that premise, Peter George's 1958 novel Red Alert spins a grim tale of just how close to nuclear destruction the world can be. A dying man suffering from the paranoid delusion that he will make the world a better place, Air Force Brigadier General Quinten has set in motion a catastrophic air attack on the Soviet Union with Strategic Air Command bombers armed with nuclear weapons. The President of the United States and his advisors frantically try to stop the attack, once it is underway. They order the American bombers shot down, and they succeed -- with one frightening exception. A lone bomber called the "Alabama Angel" eludes destruction. Its crew ignores the President's new orders and proceeds with its deadly mission. Originally published in the U.K. as "Two Hours to Doom" -- with George using the nom de plume "Peter Bryant" -- this deliberate, precisely plotted novel conjures with the apocalyptic threat of nuclear war and the almost absurd ease with which it can be triggered. A virtual genre of such topical fiction sprang up in the late 1950s -- led by Nevil Shute's "On the Beach" -- of which "Red Alert" was among the earliest and finest examples. Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler's later bestseller "Fail Safe" so closely resembled "Red Alert" in its premise that George sued on the charge of plagiarism and won an out-of-court settlement. Both novels would inspire very different films that would both be released in 1964. |
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The Father Thing
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| Creator(s): |
Philip K. Dick |
| Publisher: |
RosettaBooks |
| Subject(s): |
Fiction, Mystery, Thriller |
| Language(s): |
English |
Description:
Science fiction fans will find familiar the premise of Philip K. Dick's 1954 short story "The Father-Thing." In it, a young boy, Charlie, discovers that his father is not actually his father. The man in his house who comes home from work, kisses his mother, sits down to dinner, makes comments about his day at the office may look and talk like the real Mr. Walton, but Charlie knows better. He alone knows the hideous secret: that his real father has been killed, and that an alien now inhabits his body, and has usurped his life. It is no longer his father but the "Father-Thing." It is a familiar premise but an interesting one. Works like The Thing and, most famously, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, were especially popular in the 1950's, expressing the fear that people are not what they seem to be. The idea that something sinister may be lurking beneath a façade of suburban complacency is certainly an important component to Jack Finney's novel, Invasion of the Body Snatchers and the movie of the same name. But while that work is largely about the country's paranoia and suspiciousness during the McCarthy years, Dick's story has a much more personal focus. "The Father-Thing" is more personal because it is not about the invasion of a community, but of a family. The alien takeover serves as a metaphor for estrangement, as the "Father-Thing" represents the agency-driven by seemingly inscrutable motives-that irremediably damages the household and the family's stability. Dick's story, then, is both a chilling science fiction tale and a emotionally resonant work about a child's coming to grips with a home in turmoil. Where Charlie turns when he finds himself an outcast from his home is somewhat surprising, and it reveals much about Dick's ideas about community and exile. |
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Death and the Senator
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| Creator(s): |
Arthur C. Clarke |
| Publisher: |
RosettaBooks |
| Subject(s): |
Drama, Family & Relationships, Science Fiction & Fantasy |
| Language(s): |
English |
Description:
Martin Steelman, a senior United States Senator, has always trodden the path toward power and the Presidency, with which he was obsessed. Towards that end he has sacrificed friendship, his marriage, daughter and grandchildren, from whom he is estranged. But now he has been given a terminal medical diagnosis: his cardiac condition is incurable and irreversible and soon he will die. Resigned to this, faced with the end of ambition and the hollowness of the life that his ambition has left him, Steelman moves to reconcile with his divorced wife, his estranged daughter and through them establishes with his grandchildren the first real family relationship he has ever had. Then, Steelman finds that an experimental medical treatment, one which can be administered only in the weightless environment provided by the Russian space station, may save his life. He is approached by the State Department and the Russians and offered the treatment and therefore the very possible extension of his life. Decades earlier, in his capacity as a powerful Senate committee chairman, Steelman had been instrumental in killing a similar orbital station for the USA, calling it an egregious waste of public funds. Now Steelman comes to understand that if he accepts the treatment he will be known as a hypocrite; furthermore, he learns in a graphic way that he will displace others who may be equally or more worthy from this expensive and exclusive treatment. Steelman realizes that the dilemma he faces has placed him in the crucible of his life. |
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