Study Guide Library

Explore an ever-expanding selection of titles ranging from classic texts to contemporary works. SuperSummary Study Guides feature detailed summaries plus analyses of major themes, symbols, characters, and important quotes—all written by literature scholars and experts. Browse titles alphabetically or by genre.

There’s more! Find quick synopses of thousands more titles in our Plot Summary Library and check out our Teaching Guide Library for classroom-ready resources.

All TitlesModern FictionClassic FictionNonfictionPlaysEssaysPoetryMiddle Grade/YA
Areopagitica
John Milton

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1644

Is Google Making Us Stupid?
Nicholas Carr

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 2008

The Great Lawsuit
Margaret Fuller

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1843

Oration on the Dignity of Man
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1496

Euthyphro
Plato

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult

The Gospel Of Wealth
Andrew Carnegie

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1889

Feminism Is for Everybody: Passionate Politics
bell hooks

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 2000

The Ethics Of Ambiguity
Simone de Beauvoir

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1947

How It Feels To Be Colored Me
Zora Neale Hurston

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1928

Yellow Woman and a Beauty of Spirit
Leslie Marmon Silko

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1993

Phaedrus
Plato

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult

On The Nature Of Things
Lucretius

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1910

If I Die in a Combat Zone: Box Me Up and Ship Me Home
Tim O'Brien

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1973

Reflections On The Revolution In France
Edmund Burke

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1790

Borderlands La Frontera
Gloria E. Anzaldua

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1987

The Ballot or the Bullet
Malcolm X

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1964

Orientalism
Edward Said

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1978

Dispatches
Michael Herr

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1977

Existentialism is a Humanism
Jean-Paul Sartre

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1946

Rhetoric
Aristotle

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult

In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens
Alice Walker

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1983

A Sand County Almanac
Aldo Leopold

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1949

Shooting an Elephant
George Orwell

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1936

Notes of a Native Son
James Baldwin

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1955

Phaedo
Plato

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult

The Declaration of Independence
Thomas Jefferson

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1776

The Federalist Papers
Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1787

Common Sense
Thomas Paine

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1776

The Articles of Confederation
Benjamin Franklin

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1781

Meno
Plato

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult

Praise Of Folly
Desiderius Erasmus

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1511

Apology
Plato

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult

Second Treatise of Government
John Locke, C. B. Macpherson, ed.

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1689

Crito
Plato

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult

On Liberty
John Stuart Mill

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1859

Preface to Lyrical Ballads
William Wordsworth

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1800

Utilitarianism
John Stuart Mill

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1861

The Myth of Sisyphus
Albert Camus

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1942

Constitution of United States of America
Constitutional Convention

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1787

The Philosophy of Composition
Edgar Allan Poe

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1846

Meditation 17
John Donne

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1630

I Have A Dream Speech
Martin Luther King Jr.

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1973

Once More to the Lake
E. B. White

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1941

The Labyrinth of Solitude
Octavio Paz

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1950

The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain
Langston Hughes

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1926

Mother Tongue
Amy Tan

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1990

People Like Us
David Brooks

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 2003

The Moral Bucket List
David Brooks

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 2015

Their Finest Hour
Winston Churchill

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1949

Solitude and Leadership
William Deresiewicz

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 2009

All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten: Uncommon Thoughts on Common Things
Robert Fulghum

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1986

The Prince
Niccolò Machiavelli

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1532

I, Pencil: My Family Tree as Told to Leonard E. Read
Leonard E. Read

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1958

The Empathy Exams
Leslie Jamison

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 2014

How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed
Slavenka Drakulić

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1992

This I Believe: The Personal Philosophies of Remarkable Men and Women
Jay Allison, Dan Gediman

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 2006

Brave New World Revisited
Aldous Huxley

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1932

In Praise of Shadows
Jun’Ichirō Tanizaki, Transl. Thomas J. Harper, Transl. Edward G. Seidensticker

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1933

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God
Jonathan Edwards

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1741

A Room of One's Own
Virginia Woolf

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1929

Give Me Liberty, or Give Me Death
Patrick Henry

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1775

Bad Feminist
Roxane Gay

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 2014

Tell Me How It Ends
Valeria Luiselli

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 2017

The Singer Solution to World Poverty
Peter Singer

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1999

We Should All Be Feminists
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 2014

The Tragedy of the Commons
Garrett James Hardin

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1968

This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color
Cherrie Moraga, ed., Gloria Anzaldua, ed.

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult

High Tide in Tucson
Barbara Kingsolver

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1995

On Photography
Susan Sontag

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1977

The Subjection of Women
John Stuart Mill

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1869

A Small Place
Jamaica Kincaid

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1988

A Model of Christian Charity
John Winthrop

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1838

Slouching Towards Bethlehem
Joan Didion

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1968

Allegory Of The Cave
Plato

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | BCE

Letter From Birmingham Jail
Martin Luther King Jr.

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1963

Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect Science
Atul Gawande

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 2002

Regarding the Pain of Others
Susan Sontag

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 2003

The Way To Wealth
Benjamin Franklin

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1758

The American Scholar
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1837

The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History
Robert Darnton

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1984

Men Explain Things To Me
Rebecca Solnit

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 2014

The Uncanny
Sigmund Freud

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1919

Montaigne: Selected Essays
Michel de Montaigne

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1592

America and I
Anzia Yezierska

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1922

Becoming a Learner: Realizing the Opportunity of Education
Matthew L. Sanders

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 2012

Three Guineas
Virginia Woolf

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1938

Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination
Toni Morrison

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1992

The Harvest Gypsies: On the Road to the Grapes of Wrath
John Steinbeck

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1936

The Souls of Black Folk
W.E.B. Du Bois

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1903

Me Talk Pretty One Day
David Sedaris

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 2000

Cicero: On Duties (De Officiis)
Marcus Tullius Cicero

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | BCE

Mere Christianity
C. S. Lewis

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1952

The Fire Next Time
James Baldwin

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1963

Tales of Two Americas: Stories of Inequality in a Divided Nation
John Freeman

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 2017

American Like Me
America Ferrera

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 2018

Thick: And Other Essays
Tressie Mcmillan Cottom

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 2019

A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again
David Foster Wallace

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1997

The Case for Reparations
Ta-Nehisi Coates

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 2014

The Last Lecture
Jeffrey Zaslow, Randy Pausch

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 2008

Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema
Laura Mulvey

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1975