"No book before or since has ever had such an impact upon my imagination," declared 2001 author Arthur C. Clarke of this masterpiece of science fiction. An imaginative, ambitious history of humanity's future that spans billions of years, this 1930 epic abounds in prescient speculations. A must-read for scholars of the genre.

One of the bloodiest battles in Marine Corps history, Operation Stalemate, as Peleliu was called, was overshadowed by the Normandy landings. It was also, in time, judged by most historians to have been unnecessary; though it had been conceived to protect MacArthur’s flank in the Philippines, the U.S. fleet’s carrier raids had eliminated Japanese airpower, rendering Peleliu irrelevant. Nevertheless, the horrifying number of casualties sustained there (71% in one battalion) foreshadowed for the rest of the war: rather than fight to the death on the beach, the Japanese would now defend in depth and bleed the Americans white. Drawing extensively on personal interviews, the Marine Corps History Division’s vast oral history and photographic collection, and many never-before-published sources, this book gives us a new and harrowing vision of what really happened at Peleliu--and what it meant. Working closely with two of the 1st Regiment’s battalion commanders--Ray Davis and Russ Honsowetz--Marine Corps veteran and military historian Dick Camp recreates the battle as it was experienced by the men and their officers. Soldiers who survived the terrible slaughter recall the brutality of combat against an implacable foe; they describe the legendary “Chesty” Puller, leading his decimated regiment against enemy fortifications; they tell of Davis, wounded but refusing evacuation while his men were under fire; and of a division commander who rejects Army reinforcements. Most of all, their richly detailed, deeply moving story is one of desperate combat in the face of almost certain failure, of valor among comrades joined against impossible odds.

Beyond her most famous creation—the nightmarish vision of Frankenstein’s Creature—Mary Shelley’s most enduring influence on politics, literature, and art perhaps stems from the legacy of her lesser-known novel about the near-extinction of the human species through war, disease, and corruption. This novel, The Last Man (1826), gives us the iconic image of a heroic survivor who narrates the history of an apocalyptic disaster in order to save humanity—if not as a species, then at least as the practice of compassion or humaneness. In visual and musical arts from 1826 to the present, this postapocalyptic figure has transmogrified from the “last man” into the globally familiar filmic images of the “invisible man” and the “final girl.” Reading Shelley’s work against the background of epidemic literature and political thought from ancient Greece to Covid-19, Eileen M. Hunt reveals how Shelley’s postapocalyptic imagination has shaped science fiction and dystopian writing from H. G. Wells, M. P. Shiel, and George Orwell to Octavia Butler, Margaret Atwood, and Emily St. John Mandel. Through archival research into Shelley’s personal journals and other writings, Hunt unearths Shelley’s ruminations on her own personal experiences of loss, including the death of young children in her family to disease and the drowning of her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley. Shelley’s grief drove her to intensive study of Greek tragedy, through which she developed the thinking about plague, conflict, and collective responsibility that later emerges in her fiction. From her readings of classic works of plague literature to her own translation of Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex, and from her authorship of the first major modern pandemic novel to her continued influence on contemporary popular culture, Shelley gave rise to a tradition of postapocalyptic thought that asks a question that the Covid-19 pandemic has made newly urgent for many: What do humans do after disaster?

Science fiction-roman.

Olaf Stapledon's previous science-fiction novel, Last and First Men, envisioned 2 billion years of history, from the 1930s forward. In this companion piece, a superintelligent narrator from the remote future investigates 20th-century life, entering a subject's mind to observe his childhood, his service during World War I, and his life afterward.

Spring 1916, and three great armies - French, British and, on the other side of the wire, German - are locked in a stalemate of mud and blood on Europe's Western Front. On the ground, young British soldiers lose their innocence in the hell that is No Man's Land, while in the skies above the trenches a new breed of warrior, armed with a devastating new weapon, comes of age. As the conflict stretches into its third year, a neutral but woefully unprepared and ill-equipped America is slowly goaded into war. It falls to General John Pershing to galvanise his country's army into readiness and as the first American troops reach the front in 1917, the world waits to see if the tide of a war that has already cost millions of lives can at last be turned. Combining an historian's eye for detail with a novelist's understanding of man's hopes and fears, Shaara carries the reader into the hearts and minds of some of the war's most memorable characters, from the heroic to the infamous, and vividly brings to life one of the greatest conflagrations in human history.

GQ (Italy) called Davide Longo, "the most talented and intense Italian novelist of his generation." In this dystopian, post-apocalyptic literary novel, Italy is on the brink of collapse: borders are closed, banks are refusing to distribute money to their clients, the postal service is shuttered, and food supplies are running short. Armed gangs of drug-fueled youth rampage through the countryside as the nation descends into chaos. Leonardo was once a famous writer and professor before a sex scandal ended his marriage and his career. With society collapsing around them, his ex-wife leaves their daughter and son in his care as she sets off in search of her new husband, who is missing. Ultimately, Leonardo is forced to evacuate and take his children to safety, but to do so he will have to summon a quality he has never exhibited before: courage.

The magnificent new novel from the million-selling Booker Prize-winning author of The White Tiger: one of the most eagerly anticipated literary novels of 2011--"a kaleidoscopic portrait of a changing Mumbai." — Guardian (Best Books of 2011) Ask any Bombaywallah about Vishram Society--Tower A of the Vishram Co-operative Housing Society--and you will be told that it is unimpeachably pucca. Despite its location close to the airport, under the flight path of 747s and bordered by slums, it has been pucca for some fifty years. But Bombay has changed in half a century--not least its name--and the world in which Tower A was first built is giving way to a new city; a Mumbai of development and new money; of wealthy Indians returning with fortunes made abroad. When real estate developer Dharmen Shah offers to buy out the residents of Vishram Society, planning to use the site to build a luxury apartment complex, his offer is more than generous. Initially, though, not everyone wants to leave; many of the residents have lived in Vishram for years, and many of them are no longer young. But none can benefit from the offer unless all agree to sell. As tensions rise among the once civil neighbours, one by one those who oppose the offer give way to the majority, until only one man stands in Shah's way: Masterji, a retired schoolteacher, once the most respected man in the building. Shah is a dangerous man to refuse, but as the demolition deadline looms, Masterji's neighbours--friends who have become enemies, acquaintances turned co-conspirators--may stop at nothing to score their payday. A suspense-filled story of money and power, luxury and deprivation, and a rich tapestry peopled by unforgettable characters, not least of which is Bombay itself, Last Man in Tower opens up the hearts and minds of the inhabitants of a great city--ordinary people pushed to their limits in a place that knows none. This eBook edition includes a Reading Group Guide.

From the #1 bestselling author of Heat, Travel Team and Fantasy League comes a story of heroes, family, the thrills of skateboarding, and football. When the Brighton Bears suit up on game day, 12-year-old Tommy Gallagher is the toughest kid on the football field. And the bravest. After all, his father Patrick is a Boston firefighter--one of Boston's bravest. Tommy's dad taught him everything he knows about football--and life. Yet even Tommy isn't strong enough for what happens when the sirens ring and, for the first time, they're racing away from the fire. "First man in; last man out" had always been his dad's motto . . . yet he never said anything about leaving in an ambulance. Now Tommy's biggest battle has nothing to do with football. And the kid who always had such respect for risk on the gridiron finds himself drawn to it off the field. Set in New England, home of the Patriots' football dynasty, Mike Lupica shows off his trademark knack for spinning a tale that's equal parts sports action and heart. Last Man Out is a thoughtful tribute to the bravery of firefighters and the need we all have to live up to the level of our heroes. "As is characteristic of Lupica’s books, the sports segments, most particularly the football portions, are exceptionally well written." —VOYA "In the best traditions of sports writing, this will leave readers both breathless and thoughtful." —Booklist