To Kill a Mockingbird American Classics Edition - (HarperCollins American Classics) by Harper Lee (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Voted America's Best-Loved Novel in PBS's The Great American Read

In celebration of the 250th anniversary of the United States, HarperCollins is proud to present this library of American classics drawn from our storied catalog. One of the most cherished stories of all time, To Kill a Mockingbird is Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning masterwork of honor and injustice in the deep South--and the heroism of one man in the face of blind and violent hatred

To Kill a Mockingbird has earned many distinctions since its publi-cation in 1960. It won the Pulitzer Prize, was named the best novel of the twentieth century by librarians across the nation, and was voted by readers as America's "most beloved novel" on PBS's The Great American Read. It remains a staple of many high school reading lists across the coun-try and has been translated into more than forty languages, selling more than forty million copies worldwide. A gripping, heart-wrenching, and wholly remarkable tale of coming-of-age in a South poisoned by virulent prejudice, it views a world of great beauty and savage inequities through the eyes of a young girl, Scout Finch, and her brother, Jem, as their father, Atticus--a crusading local lawyer--risks everything to defend a Black man unjustly accused of a terrible crime.

Harper Lee explores with rich humor and unswerving honesty the irrationality of adult attitudes toward race and class in the Deep South of the 1930s. The conscience of a town steeped in prejudice, violence, and hypocrisy is pricked by the stamina and quiet heroism of one man's struggle for justice--but the weight of history will only tolerate so much.

Review Quotes

"A powerful and enduring piece of literature." - Boston Globe
"The names Scout and Atticus--and, perhaps above all, the name Harper--reflect a respect not just for the arc of history, but for the hope that it does indeed bend toward justice." - The Atlantic
"One of the most--if not the most--beloved of American novels." - New Yorker
"A seminal American story, a touchstone of racial tolerance. . . . It's a book determined to make young readers feel like grownups. . . and grownups feel like children in their petty grievances and prejudices." - USA Today
"The enduring appeal of Mockingbird lies not only in the plot or characters; the book is a mirror, a source of endless and revelatory conversation about who we are and have been as a country." - Washington Post
"The rare classic that speaks to all ages about the less triumphant aspects of American history." - Time
"A first novel of such rare excellence that it will no doubt make a great many readers slow down to relish more fully its simple distinction. . . . A novel of strong contemporary national significance." - Chicago Tribune
"All of the tactile brilliance and none of the precocity generally supposed to be standard swamp-warfare issues for Southern writers. . . . Novelist Lee's prose has an edge that cuts through cant, and she teaches the reader an astonishing number of useful truths about little girls and about Southern life." - Time (1960 review)