Central Kansas Library System

"Animal Farm is an allegorical and dystopian novella by George Orwell, first published in England on 17 August 1945. According to Orwell, the book reflects events leading up to the Russian Revolution of 1917 and then on into the Stalinist era of the Soviet Union. Orwell, a democratic socialist, was a critic of Joseph Stalin and hostile to Moscow-directed Stalinism, an attitude that was critically shaped by his experiences during the Spanish Civil...

First published in English in 1927, "Elmer Gantry" is Sinclair Lewis' novel which satirizes the Christian fundamentalist and evangelistic movements of the early part of the 20th century. From the 17th century onward there have been a number of efforts to reassert the influence of Christianity on social, cultural, and political life. In America, Christian Revivalism, as it is often referred to, has come in four waves, or "Great Awakenings" starting...

Gulliver has an itch to travel around the world, but whenever he steps on a ship, bad luck seems to find him. He is shipwrecked, abandoned, marooned, and mutinied against, and each time lands in a strange and curious place. First he discovers the kingdom of the six-inch-tall Lilliputians, then the country of the giant Brobdingnagians, then the island of the academic Laputans, which floats in the sky, and finally the noble realm of the horselike Houyhnhnms....

A satire on university life, describing the rackets and the intellectual dishonesty that goes on. The setting is the U of Moo where research into the destruction of rain forests is tailored to suit the corporation funding the project. By the author of A Thousand Acres.

A colorful cast of residents and visitors to Miami go about their daily activities, both legal and illegal. This is a big, panoramic story of the new America, as told by the author of the way we live now. The police launch speeds across Miami's Biscayne Bay with officer Nestor Camacho on board. Into the feverous landscape of the only city in the world where people from a different country with a different language and a different culture have taken...

The book that made Mark Twain famous and introduced the world to that obnoxious and ubiquitous character: the American tourist Based on a series of letters first published in American newspapers, The Innocents Abroad is Mark Twain's hilarious and insightful account of an organized tour of Europe and the Holy Land undertaken in 1867.   With his trademark blend of skepticism and sincerity, Twain casts New World eyes on the people and places of the...

A graduate from New York University takes a position caring for the only son of a weathly Manhattan family. She rapidly learns the work and time involved to ensure that the Park Avenue wife doesn't work, cook, clean or raise her own child. A satirical and comical look at the upper class of Manhattan.