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.

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All TitlesModern FictionClassic FictionNonfictionPlaysEssaysPoetryMiddle Grade/YA
Letter to My Daughter
Maya Angelou

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1987

Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina
Galileo Galilei

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1615

Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address
Abraham Lincoln

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1865

Meditation 17
John Donne

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1630

Men Explain Things To Me
Rebecca Solnit

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 2014

Meno
Plato

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult

Mere Christianity
C. S. Lewis

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1952

Me Talk Pretty One Day
David Sedaris

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 2000

Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life
Theodor W. Adorno

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1951

Modern Fiction
Virginia Woolf

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1925

Monroe Doctrine
James Monroe

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1823

Montaigne: Selected Essays
Michel de Montaigne

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1592

Mother Tongue
Amy Tan

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1990

Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown
Virginia Woolf

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1929

Naked
David Sedaris

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1997

Nature
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1836

Ninety-Five Theses
Martin Luther

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1517

Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son
James Baldwin

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1961

No Name in the Street
James Baldwin

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1972

Notes of a Native Son
James Baldwin

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1955

On Being Sane in Insane Places
David L. Rosenhan

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1973

Once More to the Lake
E. B. White

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1941

On Fairy-Stories
J. R. R. Tolkien

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1939

On Indian Removal
Andrew Jackson

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1830

On Juneteenth
Annette Gordon-Reed

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 2021

On Liberty
John Stuart Mill

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1859

On Photography
Susan Sontag

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1977

On the Equality of the Sexes
Judith Sargent Murray

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1790

On The Nature Of Things
Lucretius

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1910

On the Shortness of Life
Seneca

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 49

Oration on the Dignity of Man
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1496

Orientalism
Edward Said

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1978

People Like Us
David Brooks

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 2003

Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory
Judith Butler

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1988

Pericles, Funeral Oration
Thucydides

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | BCE

Phaedo
Plato

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult

Phaedrus
Plato

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult

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

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1992

Praise Of Folly
Desiderius Erasmus

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1511

Preface to Lyrical Ballads
William Wordsworth

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1800

Protagoras
Plato

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 390

Quit India
Mahatma Gandhi

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1942

Reflections On The Revolution In France
Edmund Burke

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1790

Regarding the Pain of Others
Susan Sontag

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 2003

Rhetoric
Aristotle

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult

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

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1689

Self Reliance
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1841

Shooting an Elephant
George Orwell

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1936

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God
Jonathan Edwards

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1741

Slouching Towards Bethlehem
Joan Didion

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1968

Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout
Cal Newport

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 2024

Solitude and Leadership
William Deresiewicz

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 2009

Speech to the Second Virginia Convention
Patrick Henry

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1775

Speech to the Troops at Tilbury
Elizabeth I

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1588

Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology
Gregory Bateson

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1972

Stranger in the Village
James Baldwin

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1953

Such, Such Were the Joys
George Orwell

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1952

Take the Tortillas Out of Your Poetry
Rudolfo Anaya

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1995

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

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 2017

Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion
Gregory Boyle

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 2009

Tell Me How It Ends
Valeria Luiselli

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 2017

The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story
Nikole Hannah-Jones

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 2019

The American Scholar
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1837

The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet
John Green

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 2021

The Articles of Confederation
Benjamin Franklin

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1781

The Ballot or the Bullet
Malcolm X

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1964

The Book of Delights
Ross Gay

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 2019

The Case for Reparations
Ta-Nehisi Coates

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 2014

The Clash of Civilizations
Samuel Huntington

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1993

The Collected Schizophrenias
Esmé Weijun Wang

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 2019

The Colossus of New York
Colson Whitehead

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 2003

The Danger of a Single Story
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 2009

The Death of the Author
Roland Barthes

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1967

The Death of the Moth
Virginia Woolf

Fiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1942

The Decay of Lying
Oscar Wilde

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1889

The Declaration of Independence
Thomas Jefferson

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1776

The Empathy Exams
Leslie Jamison

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 2014

The Ethics Of Ambiguity
Simone de Beauvoir

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1947

The Fallacy of Success
G. K. Chesterton

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1908

The Federalist Papers
John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1787

The Fire Next Time
James Baldwin

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1963

The Fourth State of Matter
Jo Ann Beard

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1996

The Gospel Of Wealth
Andrew Carnegie

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1889

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

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1984

The Great Lawsuit
Margaret Fuller

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1843

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

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1936

Their Finest Hour
Winston Churchill

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1949

The Labyrinth of Solitude
Octavio Paz

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1950

The Last Lecture
Randy Pausch, Jeffrey Zaslow

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 2008

The Melian Dialogue
Thucydides

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | BCE

The Message
Ta-Nehisi Coates

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 2024

The Moral Bucket List
David Brooks

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 2015

The Myth of Sisyphus
Albert Camus

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1942

The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain
Langston Hughes

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1926

The Perils of Indifference
Elie Wiesel

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1999

The Philosophy of Composition
Edgar Allan Poe

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1846

The Prince
Niccolò Machiavelli

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1532

The Rights of the Colonists
Samuel Adams

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1772

The Secret Lives of Booksellers and Librarians: True Stories of the Magic of Reading
James Patterson

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 2024

These Precious Days: Essays
Ann Patchett

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 2021