Peter G. Beidler’s Reader’s Companion is an indispensable guide for teachers, students, and general readers who want fully to appreciate Salinger’s perennial bestseller. Now nearly six decades old, The Catcher in the Rye contains references to people, places, books, movies, and historical events that will puzzle many twenty-first-century readers. Beidler’s guide provides some 250 explanations to help readers make sense of the culture through which Holden Caulfield stumbles as he comes of age. It provides a map showing the various stops in Holden’s Manhattan odyssey. Of particular interest to readers whose native language is not English is the glossary of more than a hundred terms, phrases, and slang expressions. In his introductory essay, “Catching The Catcher in the Rye,” Beidler discusses such topics as the three-day time line for the novel, the way the novel grew out of two earlier-published short stories, the extent to which the novel is autobiographical, what Holden looks like, and the reasons for the enduring appeal of the novel. The many photographs in the Reader’s Companion give fascinating glimpses into the world that Holden has made famous. Beidler also provides discussion of some of the issues that have engaged scholars down through the years: the meaning of Holden’s red hunting hat, whether Holden writes his novel in an insane asylum, Mr. Antolini’s troubling actions, and Holden’s close relationship with his sister and his two brothers. Readers of A Reader’s Companion to J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye will wonder how they managed without it before.

A Reader's Companion to J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye

Literature & Fiction

Beidler, Peter G.

United States

Coffeetown Press

William Cross Hazelton spent four years as a brave and devoted member of the Union cavalry in the Civil War. During that time he corresponded with Fannie Morrill, the young woman who would become his fiancée and eventually his wife. His letters depict the life of an Illinois volunteer in the Army of the Potomac, the military unit that fought Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia in most of the big battles of the Civil War: Williamsburg, Richmond, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg. Hazelton describes the battles from the viewpoint of an ordinary cavalryman slogging through the mud, following erratic orders, surviving for days on enemy turf eating nothing but hardtack, and wondering why the Union army, though superior in numbers and supplies, kept losing battles. After Lee surrendered and Lincoln was assassinated, Hazelton became part of the cavalry posse that chased John Wilkes Booth across the Potomac. His letters breathe new life into a war so devastating that it still scars the American psyche, while exhibiting a moral perspective far ahead of its time.

Army of the Potomac: The Civil War Letters of William Cross Hazelton of the Eighth Illinois Cavalry Regiment

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

H.G. Wells's classic novel The Time Machine, first published in 1895, is one part fairy tale, one part love story, one part science fiction, and one part utopia. Readers can enjoy the story on multiple levels and take away something unique to themselves upon finishing the novel. With every turn of the page, we become as little children being read a good night story; for in effect, we are being read to rather than reading ourselves. The story is told through an unnamed narrator, a young member of an informal group of men who meet occasionally at the Time Traveler's house for dinner, drinks, cigars, and conversation. It is no accident that the narrator who tells us the story is the least skeptical, indeed the most credulous of the group, in response to the Time Traveler's claim to have built a Time Machine. We need an optimistic and trusting narrator, for he represents the audacity of hope, the possibility of human endeavor leading to improvement and progress, at a time when the specter of social Darwinism and scientific fatalism had fallen over the western world. The narrator is the one who exclaims, in response to the prospect of traveling into the future, "To discover a society erected on a strictly communistic basis." As humorous and naïve as such a statement sounds to us today, communism was a synonym for utopia in the late nineteenth century. And so we are supposed to identify with the narrator, to suspend our disbelief in the absurd hypothesis of time as the fourth dimension and the fantastical invention of a time machine. During the time when we submit to the power of the story and allow ourselves to be swept away by the fantasy, time machine does exist and time travel is possible.

The Time Machine

H.G.Wells

British & Irish

Great Expectations

Charles, Dickens

The joy of reading Lyrical Ballads is watching two young poets experiment with poetic voice both against a form of poetry that had long become formulaic and predictable and against the social and political institutions that supported such established thoughts. William Wordsworth was only 28 and still unknown, while Samuel Taylor Coleridge, not yet 26, was more famous for his political speeches in support of the French Revolution than for the few poems he had published in London's literary magazines when the first edition of Lyrical Ballads was published anonymously in 1798. It was later taken over and expanded by Wordsworth in 1800, 1802, and 1805.  The new editions republished most of the poems (though some of them were revised and in a different order), and it included several others and a long "Preface," which today stands as one of the foundational explanations of Wordsworth and Coleridge's mission to focus on the voiceless commoners who had been left out of the social and political sphere. Although Lyrical Ballads has mainly been studied for its revolution in poetics, this series will help readers explore how the collection's poetic ideas extend into the sociopolitical world.  With the democratization of the poetic voice (the turn to everyday speech as Wordsworth explains in his "Preface"), Wordsworth and Coleridge were giving a poetic voice to England's social and political outcasts. But Lyrical Ballads is not an essay or a treatise. So today's readers should not expect a straight-out complaint of injustices against the established order.  Instead, the very act of paying attention and listening to the collection's characters is a politically progressive act. The more progressive act of taking them seriously and making their complaints part of our social and political debate is nothing short of revolutionary.

Lyrical Ballads: 1798

Wordsworth,William

Poetry

Walden details Thoreau's experiment with self-reliance living by a pond near Concord, MA in 1845-46. His intent is to explore the spiritual benefits of a simplified life. "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats.  A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things. When we consider what, to use the words of the catechism, is the chief end of man, and what are the true necessaries and means of life, it appears as if men had deliberately chosen the common mode of living because they preferred it to any other. Yet they honestly think there is no choice left. But alert and healthy natures remember that the sun rose clear. It is never too late to give up our prejudices. No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof. What everybody echoes or in silence passes by as true to-day may turn out to be falsehood to-morrow, mere smoke of opinion, which some had trusted for a cloud that would sprinkle fertilizing rain on their fields."

Walden; or, Life in the Woods: With "On the Duty of Civil Disobediance"

David, Thoreau Henry

DICKENS., CHARLES

Emma Bovary, heroine of Gustave Flaubert’s timeless and tragic novel Madame Bovary, is not a virtuous woman. Emma is shallow, selfish, vain, frivolous, reckless, deceitful; she mocks marriage and motherhood, thrives on romance and frippery, and lives her life on credit both literally and figuratively.  You'll love her.

Madame Bovary

FLAUBERT, GUSTAVE

World Literature

Walden details Thoreau's experiment with self-reliance living by a pond near Concord, MA in 1845-46.  His intent is to explore the spiritual benefits of a simplefied life.   ""The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.  What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.  From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats.  A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind.  There is no play in them, for this comes after work.  But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things. When we consider what, to use the words of the catechism, is the chief end of man, and what are the true necessaries and means of life, it appears as if men had deliberately chosen the common mode of living because they preferred it to any other.  Yet they honestly think there is no choice left.  But alert and healthy natures remember that the sun rose clear.  It is never too late to give up our prejudices.  No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof.  What everybody echoes or in silence passes by as true to-day may turn out to be falsehood to-morrow, mere smoke of opinion, which some had trusted for a cloud that would sprinkle fertilizing rain on their fields.

Thoreau, Henry David`

Natural Therapies for Parkinson's Disease

Conventional management of Parkinson's disease (PD) is limited. The pharmaceutical and surgical options that are available have significant side effects and only correct symptoms for a limited period of time. Even with the best conventional treatment, the disease progresses and becomes severely disabling. No existing conventional therapies that the progress of the disease; available medicines only treat symptoms temporarily. Conventional medicine views the course of the disease as "progressive" and "irreversible." Many patients, who are only partially satisfied with conventional medicine, seek alternative and complementary options in an attempt to slow, stop, or reverse the disease process. This book has several functions: - It is a science-based reference manual. - It is inspiring and empowering to patients. - It is educational for both patients and neurologists. - It is entertaining. - It fosters an understanding between conventional and complementary providers. Chapters on , Alpha-Lipoic Acid, Aluminum, Antioxidants, Beta-carotene, Calorie Restriction, Carnitine, Chelation, Cholesterol, Choline, Coenzyme Q-10, Constipation, Creatine, Curcumin (Turmeric), Dairy, DHA (fish oil), Fava Beans, Glutathione, H. pylori (Helicobacter pylori), Homocysteine, Iron, Manganese, Marijuana (Cannabis sativa), Mucuna pruriens, Velvet bean, Cowhage, Niacin, Tea, Vitamin B6, Vitamin D, and other topics.

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Mischley, Laurie K.

Diseases & Physical Ailments

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Books by Coffeetown Press

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the Coffeetown Press publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

A Reader's Companion to J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye

Army of the Potomac: The Civil War Letters of William Cross Hazelton of the Eighth Illinois Cavalry Regiment

The Time Machine

Great Expectations

Lyrical Ballads: 1798

Walden; or, Life in the Woods: With "On the Duty of Civil Disobediance"

Great Expectations

Madame Bovary

Walden; or, Life in the Woods: With "On the Duty of Civil Disobediance"

Natural Therapies for Parkinson's Disease