"Fascinated by our pervasive fear of dead bodies, mortician Caitlin Doughty set out to discover how other cultures care for the dead. From Here to Eternity is an immersive global journey that introduces compelling, powerful rituals almost entirely unknown in America. In rural Indonesia, she watches a man clean and dress his grandfather's mummified body, which has resided in the family home for two years. In La Paz, she meets Bolivian natitas (cigarette-smoking,...

The troubled infantryman Robert E. Lee Prewitt, one of the key characters in James Jones' From Here to Eternity, is a former boxer and passionate bugler. His independence and intransigence lead to conflicts with his superior officers and ultimately to his tragic end.

In this recording, Jones reads the famous scene where Prewitt plays Taps at Schofield Barracks in Hawaii. The passage is a masterpiece of writing, in which Taps becomes "the requiem

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Drama about life in the Army in the days prior to World War II. Shows the effect of Army discipline on an individualistic former boxing champion who defies the attempts of officers and men to break him when he refuses to fight on the company's boxing team. Includes actual scenes of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Helps readers through the literary experience of "The Divine Comedy," explaining the melding of poetry and mythology in the context of fourteenth century Florence and what it still means for modern day readers.

"With the election of Donald J. Trump, many people on both the left and right feared that America's 240-year-old grand experiment in democracy was coming to an end, and that Sinclair Lewis' satirical novel, It can't happen here, written during the dark days of the 1930s, could finally be coming true. Is the democratic freedom that the United States symbolizes really secure? Can authoritarianism happen in America? [The editor] queried a number of the...