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Books in Harper's modern classics series

  • One Hundred Years of Solitude

    Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Gregory Rabassa

    Paperback (Harper Perennial Modern Classics, Feb. 21, 2006)
    A PBS Great American Read Top 100 Pick"One Hundred Years of Solitude is the first piece of literature since the Book of Genesis that should be required reading for the entire human race....Mr. Garcia Marquez has done nothing less than to create in the reader a sense of all that is profound, meaningful, and meaningless in life." —William Kennedy, New York Times Book Review “More lucidity, wit, wisdom, and poetry than is expected from 100 years of novelists, let alone one man.” —Washington PostOne of the most influential literary works of our time, One Hundred Years of Solitude remains a dazzling and original achievement by the masterful Gabriel Garcia Marquez, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. One Hundred Years of Solitude tells the story of the rise and fall, birth and death of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendiá family. Inventive, amusing, magnetic, sad and alive with unforgettable men and women—brimming with truth, compassion, and a lyrical magic that strikes the soul—this novel is a masterpiece in the art of fiction.
  • The Bell Jar

    Sylvia Plath

    Paperback (Harper Perennial Modern Classics, Aug. 2, 2005)
    The Bell Jar chronicles the crack-up of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under -- maybe for the last time. Sylvia Plath masterfully draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that Esther's insanity becomes completely real and even rational, as probable and accessible an experience as going to the movies. Such deep penetration into the dark and harrowing corners of the psyche is an extraordinary accomplishment and has made The Bell Jar a haunting American classic.This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.
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  • The Glory of Their Times: The Story of the Early Days of Baseball Told by the Men Who Played It

    Lawrence S Ritter

    Paperback (Harper Perennial Modern Classics, April 6, 2010)
    Baseball was different in earlier days—tougher, rawer, more intimate—when giants like Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb ran the bases. In the monumental classic The Glory of Their Times, the golden era of our national pastime comes alive through the vibrant words of those who played and lived the game.
  • The Monkey Wrench Gang

    Edward Abbey

    Paperback (Harper Perennial Modern Classics, Dec. 12, 2006)
    Ex-Green Beret George Hayduke has returned from war to find his beloved southwestern desert threatened by industrial development. Joining with Bronx exile and feminist saboteur Bonnie Abzug, wilderness guide and outcast Mormon Seldom Seen Smith, and libertarian billboard torcher Doc Sarvis, M.D., Hayduke is ready to fight the power—taking on the strip miners, clear-cutters, and the highway, dam, and bridge builders who are threatening the natural habitat. The Monkey Wrench Gang is on the move—and peaceful coexistence be damned!
  • Bel Canto

    Ann Patchett

    Paperback (Harper Perennial Modern Classics, June 10, 2008)
    Now a major motion picture starring Julianne Moore and Ken Watanabe.“Blissfully Romantic….A strange, terrific, spellcasting story.” — San Francisco Chronicle“Bel Canto…should be on the list of every literate music lover. The story is riveting, the participants breathe and feel and are alive, and throughout this elegantly-told novel, music pours forth so splendidly that the reader hears it and is overwhelmed by its beauty.” —Lloyd Moss, WXQR“Glorious.” —The New YorkerAnn Patchett’s award winning, New York Times bestselling Bel Canto balances themes of love and crisis as disparate characters learn that music is their only common language. As in Patchett’s other novels, including Truth & Beauty and The Magician’s Assistant, the author’s lyrical prose and lucid imagination make Bel Canto a captivating story of strength and frailty, love and imprisonment, and an inspiring tale of transcendent romance.
  • Mules and Men

    Zora Neale Hurston

    (Amistad, Jan. 8, 2008)
    Mules and Men is a treasury of black America's folklore as collected by a famous storyteller and anthropologist who grew up hearing the songs and sermons, sayings and tall tales that have formed an oral history of the South since the time of slavery. Returning to her hometown of Eatonville, Florida, to gather material, Zora Neale Hurston recalls "a hilarious night with a pinch of everything social mixed with the storytelling." Set intimately within the social context of black life, the stories, "big old lies," songs, Vodou customs, and superstitions recorded in these pages capture the imagination and bring back to life the humor and wisdom that is the unique heritage of African Americans.
  • Dust Tracks on a Road: An Autobiography

    Zora Neale Hurston, Maya Angelou

    Paperback (Amistad, Jan. 3, 2006)
    “Warm, witty, imaginative. . . . This is a rich and winning book.”—The New YorkerDust Tracks on a Road is the bold, poignant, and funny autobiography of novelist, folklorist, and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston, one of American literature’s most compelling and influential authors. Hurston’s powerful novels of the South—including Jonah’s Gourd Vine and, most famously, Their Eyes Were Watching God—continue to enthrall readers with their lyrical grace, sharp detail, and captivating emotionality. First published in 1942, Dust Tracks on a Road is Hurston’s personal story, told in her own words. The Perennial Modern Classics Deluxe edition includes an all-new forward by Maya Angelou, an extended biography by Valerie Boyd, and a special P.S. section featuring the contemporary reviews that greeted the book’s original publication.
  • The Boys of Summer

    Roger Kahn

    Paperback (Harper Perennial Modern Classics, May 9, 2006)
    This is a book about young men who learned to play baseball during the 1930s and 1940s, and then went on to play for one of the most exciting major-league ball clubs ever fielded, the team that broke the color barrier with Jackie Robinson. It is a book by and about a sportswriter who grew up near Ebbets Field, and who had the good fortune in the 1950s to cover the Dodgers for the Herald Tribune. This is a book about what happened to Jackie, Carl Erskine, Pee Wee Reese, and the others when their glory days were behind them. In short, it is a book about America, about fathers and sons, prejudice and courage, triumph and disaster, and told with warmth, humor, wit, candor, and love.
  • Three Dog Tales: Old Yeller, Sounder, Savage Sam

    Fred Gipson, William H. Armstrong

    Paperback (Harper Perennial Modern Classics, Aug. 14, 2007)
    Three classic dog tales brought together in a single volume Old Yeller Winner of the Newbery Honor When his father sets out on a cattle drive for the summer, fourteen-year-old Travis is left to take care of his mother, younger brother, and the family farm. In the wilderness of early frontier Texas, Travis faces his new and often dangerous responsibilities, with many adventures along the way, all with the help of the big yellow dog who comes to be his best friend. Sounder Winner of the John Newbery Medal Sounder is a loyal family dog, determined to help his owners through thick and thin. This is the story of a great coon dog and the poor sharecroppers who own him, and of the courage and love that bind a black family together in the face of extreme prejudice from the outside world. Savage Sam In this sequel to Old Yeller, Travis and his younger brother are kidnapped by an Indian raiding party, and Savage Sam, the son of the beloved yellow dog, leads a frantic chase to bring them back.
  • The Illustrated Man

    Ray Bradbury

    Paperback (Harper Perennial Modern Classics, March 15, 2011)
    “Sometimes at night I can feel them, the pictures, likeants, crawling on my skin. Then I know they’re doing what they have to do . . . ” Fantasy master Ray Bradbury weaves a narrative spanning fromthe depths of humankind’s fears to the summit of their achievements in eighteeninterconnected stories—visions of the future tattooed onto the body of anenigmatic traveler—in The Illustrated Man, one of the essential classicsof speculative fiction from the author of The Martian Chronicles, DandelionWine, and The October Country.
  • Profiles in Courage: Deluxe Modern Classic

    John F Kennedy

    Paperback (Harper Perennial Modern Classics, Sept. 10, 2013)
    The Pulitzer Prize winning classic by President John F. Kennedy, with an introduction by Caroline Kennedy and a foreword by Robert F. Kennedy.Written in 1955 by the then junior senator from the state of Massachusetts, John F. Kennedy's Profiles in Courage serves as a clarion call to every American. In this book Kennedy chose eight of his historical colleagues to profile for their acts of astounding integrity in the face of overwhelming opposition. These heroes, coming from different junctures in our nation’s history, include John Quincy Adams, Daniel Webster, Thomas Hart Benton, and Robert A. Taft.Now, a half-century later, the book remains a moving, powerful, and relevant testament to the indomitable national spirit and an unparalleled celebration of that most noble of human virtues. It resounds with timeless lessons on the most cherished of virtues and is a powerful reminder of the strength of the human spirit. Profiles in Courage is as Robert Kennedy states in the foreword: “not just stories of the past but a book of hope and confidence for the future. What happens to the country, to the world, depends on what we do with what others have left us."Along with vintage photographs and an extensive author biography, this book features Kennedy's correspondence about the writing project, contemporary reviews, a letter from Ernest Hemingway, and two rousing speeches from recipients of the Profile in Courage Award. Introduction by John F. Kennedy’s daughter Caroline Kennedy, forward by John F. Kennedy’s brother Robert F. Kennedy.
  • Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

    Hunter S. Thompson, Ralph Steadman

    Paperback (Harpercollins Pub Ltd, March 31, 2005)
    Stylish reissue of a classic first published in the 1970s: Hunter S Thompson's ether-fuelled, savage journey to the heart of the American Dream. 'We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold! And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas!' As knights of old buckled on armour of supernatural power, so Hunter S. Thompson enters Las Vegas armed with a veritable arsenal of 'heinous chemicals'. His perilous, drug-enhanced confrontations with casino operators, bartenders, police officers and assorted representatives of the Silent Majority have a hallucinatory humour and nightmare terror never before seen on the printed page.