Modern Library imprint: 414 books

Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best nonfiction books of all time 'I cannot remember when I was not fascinated by Henry Adams,' said Gore Vidal. 'He was remarkably prescient about the coming horrors.' His political ideals shaped by two presidential ancestors—great-grandfather...

Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best nonfiction books of all time 'I always wanted to be historical,' Gertrude Stein once quipped. In 1932, Stein began writing the 'autobiography' of her longtime friend and companion, Alice B. Toklas. The book, an immediate bestseller, guaranteed...

One of the most written-about literary figures in the past decade, Arthur Rimbaud left few traces when he abandoned poetry at age twenty-one and disappeared into the African desert. Although the dozen biographies devoted to Rimbaud’s life depend on one main source for information—his own correspondence—a...

Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best nonfiction books of all time • WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE • WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD Although Theodore Rex fully recounts TR’s years in the White House (1901–1909), The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt begins with a brilliant...

The classic novel of a quest for knowledge that has delighted, inspired, and influenced generations of readers, writers, and thinkers. Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read Though set in a place and time far removed from the Germany of 1922,...

Within a Budding Grove received the Prix Goncourt when it was published in 1919 and catapulted its author to overnight fame. It takes the autobiographical narrator of Swann's Way from childhood through adolescence. He loses interest in Gilberte and falls in love with Albertine, the dark girl on her...

**A masterly work from a writer with “the uncanny ability to give us a cinemascopic vision of her America” (National Review), A Garden of Earthly Delights is the opening stanza in what would become one of the most powerful and engrossing story arcs in literature. Joyce Carol Oates’s...

Full of mischief, valor, ribaldry, and romance, The Arabian Nights has enthralled readers for centuries. These are the tales that saved the life of Shahrazad, whose husband, the king, executed each of his wives after a single night of marriage. Beginning an enchanting story each evening, Shahrazad...

The Call of the Wild—Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time 'To this day Jack London is the most widely read American writer in the world,' E. L. Doctorow wrote in The New York Times Book Review. Generally considered to be London's greatest achievement, The...

Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time Winner of the Pulitzer Prize when it was first published in 1918, **The Magnificent Ambersons **chronicles the changing fortunes of three generations of an American dynasty. The protagonist of Booth Tarkington's great...

George Eliot’s final novel and her most ambitious work, Daniel Deronda contrasts the moral laxity of the British aristocracy with the dedicated fervor of Jewish nationalists. Crushed by a loveless marriage to the cruel and arrogant Grandcourt, Gwendolen Harleth seeks salvation in the deeply spiritual...

Introduction by Mary Oliver Commentary by Henry James, Robert Frost, Matthew Arnold, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Henry David Thoreau The definitive collection of Emerson’s major speeches, essays, and poetry, The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson chronicles the life’s work of a true...

Compiled, edited, and newly revised by Ralph Ellison’s literary executor, John F. Callahan, this Modern Library Paperback Classic includes posthumously discovered reviews, criticism, and interviews, as well as the essay collections Shadow and Act (1964), hailed by Robert Penn Warren as “a body...

A new translation by Adam Thorpe   Gustave Flaubert once said of his heroine, “Emma Bovary, c’est moi.” In this acclaimed new translation, Adam Thorpe brings readers closer than ever before to Flaubert’s peerless text and, by extension, the author himself.   Emma, a passionate dreamer raised...