Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1598530003 ISBN 13: 9781598530001

Publisher: Library of America, 2006

Review:

The Library of America: Now available in one complete collection.

Thirty years ago, The Library of America was founded to undertake a historic endeavor: to help preserve the nation's cultural heritage by publishing America's best and most significant writing in durable and authoritative editions. Hailed as "the most important book-publishing project in the nation's history" (Newsweek), this award-winning series maintains America's most treasured writers in "the finest-looking, longest-lasting edition ever made" (The New Republic).

Now the entire Library of America series is available in one complete collection for home, office, or institutional libraries. The set is made up of 255 titles across a wide range of genres, including fiction, history, poetry, drama, essays, philosophy, travel writing, journalism, sermons, speeches, and slave narratives. From the writings of the Founding Fathers to the poetry of Walt Whitman and Robert Frost, from the journalism of the Civil Rights movement to the novels of Zora Neale Hurston and Philip Roth, from Abraham Lincoln: Speeches & Writings to H.P. Lovecraft: Tales, this is the ultimate collection of American letters.

For 2012, the Library of America Complete Collection has been updated and expanded with recently published titles including Kurt Vonnegut: Novels & Stories, John Adams: Revolutionary Writings, H.L. Mencken: Prejudices, and The Age of Movies: Selected Writings of Pauline Kael Click here to see the full list of volumes contained in the collection.

A Note on Production

Publishers Weekly has called The Library of America "a triumph of the bookmaker's art." Each volume in the series contains up to 1600 pages and includes a number of works. In many cases, the complete works of a writer are collected in as few as three compact volumes. The series sets extraordinarily high standards of textual, editorial, and production quality. Yet, thanks to nonprofit status, the costs of this quality are not passed on to the reader in the book's price, which is lower per page than virtually all other books on the market, hardcover or paperback. Each volume features:

• authoritative, unabridged texts
  
• a chronology of the author's life, helpful notes, and a brief textual essay
  
• a handsomely designed, easy-to-read page
  
• high-quality, acid-free paper, bound in a cloth cover and sewn to lie flat when opened
  
• a ribbon marker and printed end papers.

Test Your Library of America Knowledge

To welcome readers to our exclusive collection of Library of America editions, we've concocted a quiz (three of them, in fact) of opening lines from books in The Library of America Collection. Test your knowledge of the greatest works in American literature, and see how quickly you recognize the voices of the country's finest writers (and perhaps find yourself drawn into a tale you've never read before). You have three levels of difficulty to choose from. Work your way up, or jump in at any place:

• High School Level Quiz
  
• College Level Quiz
  
• PhD Level Quiz
  

Library of America Top Sellers

Philip K. Dick: Four Novels of the 1960s

American Food Writing: An Anthology

Paine: Collected Writings

What are the bestselling titles in the Library of America? Here are the recent favorites, including a number of 20th-century writers new to the library: Dick, Lovecraft, Kerouac, Roth, Liebling:

• Philip K. Dick: Four Novels of the 1960s (The Man in the High Castle; Ubik, etc.)
• American Food Writing: An Anthology
• Thomas Paine: Collected Writings (Common Sense; Rights of Man, etc.)
• H.P. Lovecraft: Tales
• Jack Kerouac: Road Novels, 1957-1960 (On the Road; The Dharma Bums, etc.)
• Flannery O'Connor: Collected Works (Wise Blood; Everything That Rises Must Converge; etc.)
• Dashiell Hammett: Complete Novels (Red Harvest; The Maltese Falcon; etc.)
• Alexis de Tocqueville: Democracy in America
• Elizabeth Bishop: Poems, Prose, and Letters
• Bill McKibbon: American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau
• Ulysses S. Grant: Memoirs and Selected Letters (Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant; Selected Letters, 1839-1865)
• Raymond Chandler: Stories and Early Novels (The Big Sleep; Farewell, My Lovely; etc.)
• Tennesee Williams: Plays 1937-1955
• Raymond Chandler: Later Novels and Other Writings (The Lady in the Lake; The Long Goodbye; etc.)
• Thomas Jefferson: Writings (Autobiography; Notes on the State of Virginia; etc.)
• James Baldwin: Collected Essays (Notes of a Native Son; The Fire Next Time; etc.)