With the Great War over, the Renshai have won back the Fields of Wrath. As the survivors limp homeward, Tae Kahn--Subikahn's father--fears that a far larger and fiercer wave of enemy soldiers is headed toward them. One Kjempemagiska and an army of their man-sized servants nearly defeated the entire Continent. This time, Tae is certain the ranks will include hundreds of these strong, magical, island-dwelling giants. The only hope for the peoples of the Continent is to regather their war-weary troops and convince the few magical beings of their own world to assist them. It becomes a race against time as Tae, his friends, and his family struggle to convince the Continental generals of the danger; attempt to turn reluctant, antagonistic mages and elves into allies; spy on the giant Kjempemagiska sorcerors; and seek some means to defeat an enemy powerful beyond contemplation.
The Grapes of Wrath is a novel written by John Steinbeck that tells the story of the Joad family's journey from Oklahoma to California during the Great Depression. The novel highlights the struggles and hardships faced by migrant workers during this time, as well as the exploitation they faced at the hands of wealthy landowners. Steinbeck's writing style is raw and powerful, with vivid descriptions that bring the characters and their surroundings to life. The novel has been widely acclaimed for its social commentary and remains a classic in American literature. Despite being published over 80 years ago, the novel still resonates with readers today, serving as a reminder of the importance of empathy and compassion towards those who are less fortunate.
This book was the first broad exposé of the social and environmental damage inflicted by the growth of corporate agriculture in California. Factories in the Field—together with the work of Dorothea Lange, Paul Taylor, and John Steinbeck—dramatizes the misery of the dust bowl migrants hoping to find work in California agriculture. McWilliams starts with the scandals of the Spanish land grant purchases, and continues on to examine the experience of the various ethnic groups that have provided labor for California's agricultural industry—Chinese, Japanese, Mexicans, Filipinos, Armenians—the strikes, and the efforts to organize labor unions
Offers a thrilling account of the first stage of the Peloponnesian War, also known as the Ten Years' War, between the city-states of Athens and Sparta, detailing the pitched battles by land and sea, sieges, sacks, raids and deeds of cruelty—along with courageous acts of mercy, charity and resistance.
John Steinbeck wrote The Grapes of Wrath during an astonishing burst of activity between June and October of 1938. Throughout the time he was creating his greatest work, Steinbeck faithfully kept a journal revealing his arduous journey toward its completion. The journal, like the novel it chronicles, tells a tale of dramatic proportions—of dogged determination and inspiration, yet also of paranoia, self-doubt, and obstacles. It records in intimate detail the conception and genesis of The Grapes of Wrath and its huge though controversial success. It is a unique and penetrating portrait of an emblematic American writer creating an essential American masterpiece.
Sanora Babb’s long-hidden novel Whose Names Are Unknown tells an intimate story of the High Plains farmers who fled drought dust storms during the Great Depression. Written with empathy for the farmers’ plight, this powerful narrative is based upon the author’s firsthand experience. This clear-eyed and unsentimental story centers on the fictional Dunne family as they struggle to survive and endure while never losing faith in themselves. In the Oklahoma Panhandle, Milt, Julia, their two little girls, and Milt’s father, Konkie, share a life of cramped circumstances in a one-room dugout with never enough to eat. Yet buried in the drudgery of their everyday life are aspirations, failed dreams, and fleeting moments of hope. The land is their dream. The Dunne family and the farmers around them fight desperately for the land they love, but the droughts of the thirties force them to abandon their fields. When they join the exodus to the irrigated valleys of California, they discover not the promised land, but an abusive labor system arrayed against destitute immigrants. The system labels all farmers like them as worthless “Okies” and earmarks them for beatings and worse when hardworking men and women, such as Milt and Julia, object to wages so low they can’t possibly feed their children. The informal communal relations these dryland farmers knew on the High Plains gradually coalesce into a shared determination to resist. Realizing that a unified community is their best hope for survival, the Dunnes join with their fellow workers and begin the struggle to improve migrant working conditions through democratic organization and collective protest. Babb wrote Whose Names are Unknown in the 1930s while working with refugee farmers in the Farm Security Administration (FSA) camps of California. Originally from the Oklahoma Panhandle are herself, Babb, who had first come to Los Angeles in 1929 as a journalist, joined FSA camp administrator Tom Collins in 1938 to help the uprooted farmers. As Lawrence R. Rodgers notes in his foreword, Babb submitted the manuscript for this book to Random House for consideration in 1939. Editor Bennett Cerf planned to publish this “exceptionally fine” novel but when John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath swept the nation, Cerf explained that the market could not support two books on the subject. Babb has since shared her manuscript with interested scholars who have deemed it a classic in its own right. In an era when the country was deeply divided on social legislation issues and millions drifted unemployed and homeless, Babb recorded the stories of the people she greatly respected, those “whose names are unknown.” In doing so, she returned to them their identities and dignity, and put a human face on economic disaster and social distress.
“Pletts’s ambitious debut weaves our history into an intense narrative for today's readers.” —Alan Geoffrion, author of Broken Trail Eldon Quint toils as a farmer on the Dakota frontier. The widowed father leaves the faintest impression as he moves through the world, wishing to shield his sons from the violence that shaped his own childhood. His twin brother, an outlaw known by his chosen name—Jack Foss—leaves only bloodshed in his wake. After years of estrangement end in violence on a winter morning in 1883, the farmer Eldon Quint sets off to rid the world of the outlaw Jack Foss once and for all.
Jackson Thorn was my best friend and worst enemy, but that didn't stop me from wanting him.From first words to high school halls, our childhood years braided a bond that wove in a direction neither of us could predict or outgrow. Forbidden became a word we ignored. It wasn't that we didn't care. It was that we cared too much.We had it all planned out. We thought we could make it. We thought we'd been careful.But all we managed to do was prolong the inevitable. Our destruction.
