este libro es excelente no solo para los que quieren encontrar una consulta rapida, sino para el inicio de un estudio profundo de literatura.esta bien, hay que admitir que no es ciento por ciento completo y que en la parte de literatura caribena, excluye a algunos, pero es un buen comienzo para este libro, ojala que en ediciones subsiguientes se siga ampliando la parte que toca mas a latinoamerica.

LUIS MENDEZ crazzyteacher@hotmail.com

This is a very important study of early American writing and should be sought out by anyone interested in the formation of American political and religious rhetoric.

"Come here, Huck," Aunt Polly called from the front porch where she was washing the clothes, " Don't you dare talk to that nigger again, you hear me, Huck, never!"
"Alright, I am coming I was just making a bargain," Huck yelled back as he slipped the money in his pocket.
My essay is on the book Huckleberry Finn. I read this book and loved it. I think this book shows a friendship between a black slave and a white boy during a time when that was considered an unusual thing.
This book takes place during a time when blacks were not treated equal. Blacks were thought of as property not as humans. An example of this takes place in the down town slave market.
" Cheap niggers, get your cheap niggers," a slave driver called out from on top of the stage. Families are being separated and children are crying while they are standing in shackles and cuffs. This is hatred.
In this book, there is a lot of action. Every time you turn the page somebody is getting into trouble. It even goes as far as to put on a play to rip people off.
" Come see the Play of Nonsense, the best in the world," the duke yelled to the listeners. The duke and so called king are going to put on a play. Their idea is to rip people off and run with their money. It is a smart idea but later on they pay for it. The next night the play starts. Hundreds of people walk in and hand their money to the duke. Right when the play starts, the duke comes out and announces that there have been some misunderstandings and rushes off with
the money he collected from the audience. This book's plot is awesome.
In this story the main characters are laid back and have a great sense of humor. An example this happens when Huck and Jim, a runaway slave, are rafting down the huge river. Jim is in great danger, but they always have time to play tricks on other people.
Also, there is a lot of dirty tricks and cheating. All four characters have a good sense of humor and a mind that is made to get into trouble. An example of this takes place when Huck fakes his own death and fools everybody while he lives on a raft for two years. He left his Aunt Polly behind to mourn about him and fooled everybody else. For a while he stayed on a little island but then decided to raft down a river. He made his own camps and caught his own food. All this to him was a fun vacation. He loved it!
In conclusion, this book is awesome! My four beliefs are: there is a hatred toward blacks in this story; the plot is filled with all kinds of action; the characters are happy, laid back, and have a great humor; and there is a lot of bad trick playing and a whole bunch of cheating in this story. I think Twain was trying to show us an ideal example of friendship.

When I read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain in high school, it was possibly the first book I enjoyed that was assigned by a teacher. Twain's imagery puts the reader right beside Huck while he escapes 'sivilization' and floats down the Mississippi river with his slave-gone-fugitive friend Jim. Huck's innocent outlook on the world is both humorous and adorable. Huck's respect for Jim is admirable. Even though Huck was brought up with Jim being a inferior slave, he still looks up to Jim. Also, I think that although Jim's dialect adds to the effectiveness of the book, it is very difficult to understand. I think Twain writes it a little too much how the dialect sounds. I would recommend this book to anyone. It offers plenty of excitement and surprises.

This is truly one of the great American novels, but not only is it popular with critics and academics, it is a great story for the everyday reader. I was originally assigned to read this book over the summer before eigth grade and thought it was a terrifically fun story about a young boy on an adventure down the Mississippi River, but now several years later I can still relate to it, but on a new level. This book contains fabulous social satire, excellent use of the vernacular, wonderful characters such as the Duke and Dauphin, and several lessons in morality presented by a savvy young boy who doess not realize how intelligent are his instincts. Mark Twain is a marvelous author, this being only one of his fine novels and short stories, and I envy his ability to get in touch with his childhood and create such a genuine and accurate character as Huck Finn. This is a terrific book, and I feel that anyone who has not had the privilege of reading it is missing out on something wonderful.

Having to rate a book like this is no easy task. I give it four stars as a sort of average. The edition itself, with a solid introduction by Emory Eliot, is very good. The novel, like all of Brown's works, is a somewhat unsatisfying effort.

That said, let me add quickly that this novel is a must-read, without a doubt. This truly Gothic tale will keep you in suspence from start to finish--and guess what, Brown even claims a historical precedent for the narrator's brother slaughtering his wife and children. This is Real TV!

It is not a great novel (although superior to, for instance, "Edgar Huntly" and "Stephen Calvert") but it is a fascinating one. Brown was quick to jump on the bandwagon of female fiction that proved to be the bestseller in 19th century America, and this semi-epistolary tale by a female narrator is fascinating if only for the problems its form poses. For instance, its epistolary character, meant to create a sense of urgency and directness, never convinces due to its pretentious literate (read, latinate) diction and syntax. Moreover, Brown's choice of a female narrator--a man writing like a woman writing like a man--, while marketable in 1798, shows that he always bites off much more than he can chew. A much better (and earlier, 1797!) example of a female epistolary novel is Hannah W. Foster's "The Coquette," available in a wonderful edition also by the Oxford UP.

Unlike what some would have you believe, Brown is not the earliest American novelist. It is interesting to note that some of his fans claim Brown instead of Cooper, completely forgetting the books put out by female authors and read mainly by women. I might add that Brown had a male predecessor also, a namesake, William Hill Brown ("The Power of Sympathy," 1789): one shouldn't try to simplify the history of early American literature. However, to come to grips with American literature, and especially its love for the Gothic (mystery, murder, incest), "Wieland" is a great start, and this is a very good edition.

If you are considering reading this book: 1) Read it! 2) Read the novel, then the excellent introduction (I've never read an introduction I liked so well.) I recommend you read this book not because it is such an incredible piece of literature but because of it's importance when it came out. The novel's central story is what happens to an immigrant family working in the Chicago stockyards in the early 1900s. Some reviewers have blasted the book's pro-Socialism, anti-capitalism slant. I think that is a bit silly; the last few pages are somewhat of a Socialist manifesto, but it doesn't interfere with the rest of the novel being an interesting read. While every conceivable bad thing happens to the protagonist, and while such occurrences may seem outlandish and unlikely, it is still important for us to consider that they could have happened; it is still important for us to consider how such calamities and uneducated choices can shape our lives. When the book was published, public attention focused not on the plight of the immigrant protagonist, but on the conditions in the packing plants and slaughterhouses. Sinclair meticulously researched this part of the book, and all his claims were supported but one (that of a man ending up in a bucket of lard). I have been to present day slaughterhouses and packing plants, and I know that conditions today are sanitary and humane for the most part. However, the book gave me an appreciation that this was not always the case. As you read the novel, consider your reaction if you had been reading it when it was first published; consider also the choices you would have made as the immigrant protagonist.

The Jungle is a very well written book, particularly for an author who was only 28 years old when he wrote it. The story features an early twentieth century family who has just immigrated to Chicago from Lithuania, and their struggles to survive in America. This is not an inspirational story about the American Dream. Quite the contrary, it is a story about how the American Dream was a nightmare for many poor and uneducated immigrants. The Jungle chronicles the travails of Jurvis and his family, as they struggle to learn how to survive. It is depressing to read about the disasters which befell this family, and how their ignorance was taken advantage of on so many levels. One would hope that this no longer happens to immigrants, but of course, it does, just in different ways. Jurvis and his family work in the meat processing district of Chicago, and the book details the working conditions of the meatpacking plants. Those details led to investigation and greater regulation of the meatpacking industry, as well as modern child labor laws. In the last several chapters, we witness a transformation of Jurvis, as he learns his entire family has either died or is selling themselves into prostitution. Jurvis stumbles upon socialism, and quickly becomes a supporter of the movement to bring power to the working class people, and end the wage-slavery taking place in the meatpacking plants. Jurvis' transformation into a socialist is a classic pro-socialism story, and it was particularly interesting to read that part. This pre-communist account reminds us that socialism is really simply a political theory, which was never really properly introduced in supposedly socialist countries. I did find the last few chapters dealing with socialism to be hastily written, and not nearly as engaging as the first part of the book. The Jungle is a classic, and for so many reasons, it should be required reading in college, if not high school (but sadly, it is not).

Upton Sinclair's the Jungle is a distressing and touching story of the immigrant life in America during the early years of this century. Jurgis, Ona, and their families came to America from Lithuania to live a better life. After some time, reality set it. Their faith in America remained though. America was not what they had expected, especially once Ona and Jurgis were married. There was a constant pressure to work, but no matter where they turned they were poverty-stricken. Jurgis insisted Ona not work, but their financial situation demanded her to. This historically accurate book displays and reveals the horrific factory work and the workers suffering. Jurgis job descriptions were unbelievable. He was asked to stay after one day from work to butcher pregnant cows and cows that had gone down or ones that were sick and had boils all over them. Their meat was then mixed with all the uncontaminated meat. Jurgis then realized how the packers operated. They sold this spoiled, contaminated, or adulterated meat without thinking twice. The workers were exposed to horrible diseases, had to work harsh working condition, were not paid for days off. The employers did not care because if they quit or would not do the work, there were plenty of people who would do the work and needed a job. Throughout the novel, it seems no matter where the family turns they cannot get ahead. After Antanas, wife Ona, and his two sons die, and Jurgis is forced to give up the house, he enters crime with a friend he met in jail. Jurgis found out quickly just how corrupt Chicago and city government was.

Anthologies are tough things to edit, I'm sure. After all, any anthology of literature printed by, say, Oxford, or Norton especially, has the kind of power necessary to grant its contents canonical status in literary study. Furthermore, the Norton anthologies tend to have immediate canonical status themselves.

Perhaps this is why Nelson takes so many chances with this anthology, some for better, and some for worse. I did not want to stick him with a 2 star rating, so I gave him a 3, but whereas I normally consider a 3-star rating as a kind of "yes, I liked it while I was reading it," this time I give it because I'm trying to average the times he made excellent choices with the times he seems to miss the mark.

The most questionable of Nelson's decisions? Easy. His decision to publish Japanese haiku from World War 2. No, that's not the questionable part. But he edits them all together to form one long poem. He takes haiku from many different authors and turns it into a Harmonium-era Stevens poem. This move defies all sense.

However, it also illustrates what is great in Nelson's anthology: inclusiveness. He goes to great lengths to include authors you might not find in other anthologies; and if you would find them, chances are you will find more poems by these poets in Nelson's anthology, or at least different poems. It bests the Norton Anthology in the Harlem Renaissance department, that's for sure. I'd never heard of Angelina Welde Grimke, for instance, who's just an amazing poet who was writing Plath well before Plath.

It is indeed irksome that this inclusiveness is sometimes at the expense of the "major" poets in the American canon: poets like Stevens get ridiculously short treatment, and half of the time, their most important or recognizeable poems are left out entirely. While I appreciate that Nelson wants to open up the canon a little bit (okay, a lot, and there's nothing wrong with that), his anthology feels a little incomplete in a field in which the Norton still casts the tallest shadow. Meaning that, while no anthology can stand alone and requires supplementation, Nelson's requires much more supplementation merely because his exclusions fly in the face of what is, for better or worse, required reading by current canonical standards.

So, if you plan to use this anthology in a class, you will probably need to supplement many of the authors with photocopies. But chances are you were going to do that anyway.