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"[a]n eminently readable and fascinating
collection of primary-source materials, interviews, essays, and literary
analysis...Students studying the book will find this work valuable,
but don't discount its use for World War II buffs and those interested
in learning more about this period in our history."
School Library Journal (print)
"If your literature teachers use A Separate
Peace, you will want this book."
Blanche
Woolls & David Loertscher (GaleGroup.com) (print)
Offering an
insightful analysis, this study helps young readers relate to the themes of disillusionment, guilt, betrayal,
fear of failure, and intergenerational conflicts experienced by the teenaged
characters in John Knowles’ A
Separate Peace. With commentary by Knowles himself,
this book situates the novel against the
backdrop of World War II, enabling students to see the connections between the fictional world of the novel and the real world
as it existed for young people during the war years between 1942 and 1945. Going well beyond a standard literary
treatment, this interdisciplinary casebook provides a collection of historical primary documents drawn from
official records, War Department orders, institutional histories, personal
memoirs and letters, and poignant interviews.
In addition, the online sourcebook provides the user access to:
- Photographic essay of
the moods and setting of A Separate Peace
- John Knowles
Interview, reflecting on his Exeter experience
- Original A Separate Peace manuscript page
- Chronology of Conscription in American History
- Eyewitness Accounts
of World War II: Accounts of events
including the attack at Pearl harbor, the first atomic blast and the invasion
of Normandy
- World War II National
Archive Photograph Exhibit
- Preparatory Schools:Exeter, Eton, Harrow, Rugby, Hotchkiss,
Choate, Middlesex and more
- E Texts to Chaucer’s The Miller’s Tale and The Reeve’s Tale, Ben Johnson’s The Alchemist, and Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage
- Biographical sites on
John Knowles, William Blake, Ernest Hemingway, Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley,
Camus, Joseph Heller, Norman Mailer, Irwin Shaw, George Marshall, Stephan Crane
and others
- Glossary of cultural
references and historical idioms from A
Separate Peace
- Web-based study
questions
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