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
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

Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Paulo Freire

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1968

Breaking Night: A Memoir of Forgiveness, Survival, and My Journey from Homeless to Harvard
Liz Murray

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2010

Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War
Nathaniel Philbrick

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2006

The Motorcycle Diaries
Che Guevara

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1992

Brain On Fire
Susannah Cahalan

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2012

Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World
Jack Weatherford

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2004

The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine
Michael Lewis

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2010

A Short History of Nearly Everything
Bill Bryson

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2003

Salt: A World History
Mark Kurlansky

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2002

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
Yuval Noah Harari

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2011

Blowout
Rachel Maddow

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2019

Euthyphro
Plato

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult

The Gospel Of Wealth
Andrew Carnegie

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1889

Agricola
Tacitus

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 98

The Minutemen and Their World
Robert A. Gross

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1976

The Blind Side
Michael Lewis

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2006

Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead
Sheryl Sandberg, Nell Scovell

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2013

An Ordinary Man
Paul Rusesabagina

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2006

Feminism Is for Everybody: Passionate Politics
bell hooks

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 2000

A Place to Stand
Jimmy Santiago Baca

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2001

The Return of Martin Guerre
Natalie Zemon Davis

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1983

The Ethics Of Ambiguity
Simone de Beauvoir

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1947

With the Old Breed
Eugene Sledge

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1981

Ways Of Seeing
John Berger

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1972

The Lost Boy
Dave Pelzer

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1997

Catch Me If You Can: The True Story of a Real Fake
Frank Abagnale, Stan Redding

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1980

The Innocent Man
John Grisham

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2006

Band of Brothers
Stephen E. Ambrose

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1992

Citizen: An American Lyric
Claudia Rankine

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2014

How It Feels To Be Colored Me
Zora Neale Hurston

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1928

Popol Vuh
Anonymous

Nonfiction | Scripture | Adult | Published in 1554

Nothing to Envy
Barbara Demick

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2009

Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing
Ted Conover

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1999

The Gay Science
Friedrich Nietzsche

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1882

The Tao Of Pooh
Benjamin Hoff

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1982

A Civil Action
Jonathan Harr

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1995

Yellow Woman and a Beauty of Spirit
Leslie Marmon Silko

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1993

The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History (2014)
Elizabeth Kolbert

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2014

Being Mortal: Illness, Medicine and what Matters in the End
Atul Gawande

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2014

Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming
Naomi Oreskes, Erik M. Conway

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2010

A Beautiful Mind
Sylvia Nasar

Nonfiction | Biography | Adult | Published in 1998

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
Mary Roach

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2003

Columbine
Dave Cullen

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2009

Hole In My Life
Jack Gantos

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2002

Phaedrus
Plato

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult

Fist, Stick, Knife, Gun: A Personal History of Violence
Geoffrey Canada

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1995

A Grief Observed
C. S. Lewis

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1961

The Pianist
Władysław Szpilman

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1946

On The Nature Of Things
Lucretius

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1910

When Breath Becomes Air
Paul Kalanithi

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2016

Redefining realness: My path to womanhood, identity, love, & so much more
Janet Mock

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2014

Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage
Alfred Lansing

Nonfiction | Biography | Adult | Published in 1959

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

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1973

Imagined Communities: Reflections On The Origin And Spread Of Nationalism
Benedict Anderson

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1983

Autobiography Of A Face
Lucy Grealy

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1994

Educating Esmé: Diary of a Teacher’s First Year
Esmé Raji Codell

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1999

Same Kind Of Different As Me
Ron Hall, Lynn Vincent, Denver Moore

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2006

Zami: A New Spelling of My Name
Audre Lorde

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1982

Arc of Justice
Kevin Boyle

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2004

In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer
Irene Gut Opdyke, Jennifer Armstrong

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1992

The Four Loves
C. S. Lewis

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1960

My Beloved World
Sonia Sotomayor

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2013

Stealing Buddha's Dinner
Bich Minh Nguyen

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2007

Random Family
Adrian Nicole LeBlanc

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2003

Thirteen Days
Robert F. Kennedy

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1968

Capitalism And Freedom
Milton Friedman

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1962

Reflections On The Revolution In France
Edmund Burke

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1790

Escaping Salem
Richard Godbeer

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2004

This Changes Everything
Naomi Klein

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2014

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

Spare Parts
Buzz Williams

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2004

The Beautiful Struggle
Ta-Nehisi Coates

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2008

Desert Exile
Yoshiko Uchida

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1982

Orientalism
Edward Said

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1978

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
Matthew Desmond

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2016

Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim in the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation
Eboo Patel

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2007

The Pursuit of Happyness
Chris Gardner

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2006

Dispatches
Michael Herr

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1977

Confederates In The Attic: Dispatches From The Unfinished Civil War
Tony Horwitz

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1998

Down These Mean Streets
Piri Thomas

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1967

The Perfect Storm
Sebastian Junger

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1997

The Prince of Los Cocuyos: A Miami Childhood
Richard Blanco

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2014

All Souls: A Family Story From Southie
Michael Patrick MacDonald

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1999

Lives On The Boundary
Mike Rose

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1989

Existentialism is a Humanism
Jean-Paul Sartre

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1946

Of Plymouth Plantation, 1620-1647
William Bradford

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1651

Stasiland
Anna Funder

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2003

White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide
Carol Anderson

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2016

The Trojan War: A New History
Barry Strauss

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2006

Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance
Barack Obama

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1995

Bad Boy: A Memoir
Walter Dean Myers

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2001

The Worst Hard Time
Timothy Egan

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2005

An Unquiet Mind
Kay Redfield Jamison

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1995

An Invisible Thread: The True Story of an 11-Year-Old Panhandler, a Busy Sales Executive, and an Unlikely Meeting with Destiny
Laura Schroff, Alex Tresniowski

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2010

Profiles in Courage
John F. Kennedy

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1955