An excellent multigenerational story about the South up to the eve of the civil rights movement. The themes of generational continuity, love of the land and nature, clash with the old South\\\'s racial divisions.

A novel of epic length and scope--A Soldier of the Great War explores the search for beauty and meaning in life during a time of war and chaotic disorder. Inside its framework tale of the elderly Alessandro and the youthful Nicolo walking to Monte Prato lie a huge range of episodes that explore life's greatest themes.

In Le Rouge et le noir Stendhal presents a jaded view of the aristocratic and liberal society at the end of Bourbon Restoration. The novel, as its title suggests, is built from contrasting elements--the red of romantic love (not the military as some critics claim; blue is the color of the French military) and the black of church clerics (which provides a disguise for the main character\\\'s true ambitions), the restored but outdated aristocrats and the newly rich liberals who about to replace them, the rustic simplicity of provincial life in Verriere and the empty sophistication of aristocratic Paris. Our guide through these worlds is the bitter Jacobin Julian Sorel, who longs for the passion of the Napoleonic era and takes revenge on liberal society by seducing the wife of a provincial mayor and on aristocrats by seducing the daughter of the marquis who employs him. Even the composition of the novel involves contrasts--the restrained neo-classic style employed by Stendhal with its balanced sentences used to narrate Julian Sorel\\\'s search for passion and revenge.

Hardy's first Wessex novel, FFMC establishes the setting and values that Hardy uses in his later novels. The countryside of southwest England with its ancient connection to England's primitive and medieval past (Stonehenge and Glastonbury) informs the values and actions of Hardy's characters. His tragic or near-tragic figures violate the traditional values and cause pain beyond themselves. In FFMC, Bathsheba's pride and vanity violate the natural order of Wessex and are revenged/purged in her tragic marriage with Sergeant Troy. In contrast, the resourceful and knowledgeable Gabriel Oak represents the Wordsworthian figure that Hardy uses to represent the correct norms toward which the flawed character must either move, as Bathsheba finally does, or suffer tragic consequences, as many of Hardy's other characters do.