Originally published in Life magazine in September 1952, "The Old Man and the Sea" by Ernest Hemingway is one of the most beloved short novels in all of literature. The book won the Pulitzer Prize in 1952 and contributed to Hemingway winning the 1954 Nobel Prize for Literature. "The Old Man and the Sea" tells the story of Santiago, an aging Cuban fisherman who sets out on a solo fishing trip, eventually hooking an enormous marlin. The novel features the author's characteristic minimalism and compact style, which rejects long, flowery prose in favor of more direct storytelling. Man versus nature, loyalty, perseverance and death are among the many themes explored in this classic novel.
Herman Melville wrote the American literary classic "Moby Dick" in 1851. Since then, the novel has been read and discussed by critics and students of literature around the world. The novel tells the story of Ishmael, a young sailor who sets off on a whaling expedition with the burly Captain Ahab. Ishmael and the rest of the crew soon realize that Ahab's mission is personal and that he seeks to destroy one specific whale, a gigantic white sperm whale named Moby Dick that wrecked his ship and bit off his leg. The novel follows the story of the whalers' pursuit of Moby Dick as Melville explores themes such as God's existence, man versus nature, isolation, good and evil, and social class. The novel is considered a prime example of American Romanticism popularized by Melville and other authors of the time.
Published in 1955 by American author Walter Lord, "A Night to Remember" is a nonfiction book that recalls the events surrounding the sinking of the Titanic in 1912. Lord interviewed dozens of survivors when researching the book and strove to retell the events of that fateful night as accurately as possible. "A Night to Remember" is popular in literature classes and routinely appears on summer reading lists across the country. Though the book mostly presents the facts from an objective standpoint, Lord does apply a biting social criticism in certain parts, exposing the cruelty of a society that would allow third-class women and children to die ahead of first-class men.