Prentice Hall Literature World Masterpieces

by Prentice Hall

Book Overview

Contents: • Sumerian, Egyptian and Hebrew Literature • Persian and Arabic Literature • Indian Literature • Chinese Literature • Japanese Literature • Ancient Greece • Roman Literature • The Middle... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0134146247
• ISBN13: 9780134146249
• Release Date: January 1996
• Publisher: Pearson Prentice Hall
• Length: 1520 Pages
• Weight: 5.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.5" x 7.6" x 2.2"

Customer Reviews

Great book full of the best masterpieces

I purchased this book for my teenage son. It is a book used in one of his highschool classes. This book is HUGE! He was carrying it back and forth to school because of homework purposes. I purchased a used copy for him to leave at home. It was a life saving step for his back. My son is an avid reader and really enjoys all the classic masterpieces in this book.Prentice Hall Literature: World Masterpieces

One of my best high school memories

From an educator's perspective, I can't really give much of an opinion on the Prentice Hall (or the "bible", as my friends and I called it in high school, where we were assigned the third edition as our major reading for the entire grade 10 year). However, from a student's perspective, it was an excellent choice. Getting away from the Catcher in the Rye and getting into the epic of Gilgamesh and Pablo Neruda was a true eye-opener for a kid who didn't have so much "world" in her literature collection so far, but who was also an interested reader. In terms of variety and quality, the selections are my idea of a near-perfect textbook. My first encounters with Gogol, the Decameron, and Sappho are all here. Upon finishing the course, a few of us even requested that our teacher order copies for us that we could keep. I remember the sheer *weight* of the thing as much as anything else, too. You had to really like it to cart it home every night for readings. You'd probably guess my friends and I were rather willing students, and we were. I have no idea how a slacker would take to this tome, but it was truly one of the best things that I was ever exposed to in high school. I do, however, agree that sometimes the questions are, well, a bit lame.

Quite a nice book.

This book has a great many different short stories. They give the student a good feel for the perspectives and culture of their time. It is interesting to see how literature evolves over time as well. I do have to say though, that it does not really highlight the masterpieces of world literature. A teacher might be better off (especially for the money) buying individual copies of say, Shakespeare novels, some Charles Dickens, Dostoyevsky, or other paramount examples of world literature. Also, the reflection questions are not great.