In the Arena: Stories of Political Life

Tarkington, Booth, 1869-1946Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.7
Word count
260K words
Chapters
26

Tags

English Originals Foreign Literature Political AllegoryPolitical TurmoilSocial ObservationAmerican PoliticsPortrait GalleryPolitical CareerPower GameHuman NatureCorruption and IdealsSatirical Style

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.In the Arena: Stories of Political Life by Booth TarkingtonAuthor: Tarkington, Booth, 1869-1946,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Aug 1, 2005

Editor's review

This short story collection comes from the American novelist Booth Tarkington. Taking political life as its subject, it presents the many faces of human nature in the political arena through stories rather than argument. With a novelist's eye for observation, Tarkington portrays the situations and choices of political figures, letting readers see the concrete people behind the exercise of power rather than abstract institutional analysis. As a free eBook from Project Gutenberg, it is easily accessible and serves well as an introductory read for understanding early twentieth-century American political fiction. Readers should not expect a systematic political treatise; it is better read as a set of narrative works with plots and characters, through which one can appreciate how literature handles the theme of public life. For lovers of English and American literature, it is a supplement to understanding the breadth of Tarkington's subject matter; for general readers interested in politics, these stories offer a literary perspective for observation.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Not a good fit for

Reading tips

  1. Read one or two stories first to get a feel for the narrative style, then decide whether to read the whole book.
  2. A brief look at the early twentieth-century American political background will help in understanding the context of the stories.
  3. Read it story by story as bedtime or commute reading; there is no need to finish it in one sitting.
  4. Mark unfamiliar words first and look them up later to keep your reading rhythm and avoid frequent interruptions.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26

FAQ

Is this book a work of political science? No. It is a collection of short stories by Booth Tarkington on the subject of political life. It is a literary work that presents human nature in the political arena through stories and characters rather than offering theoretical analysis or institutional research.
Does reading it require a strong command of English? The original is in English, and the text is early twentieth-century fiction with somewhat literary sentence structures. An intermediate or higher level of English reading ability is preferable; readers with weaker skills can work through it gradually with a dictionary or a parallel text.
Where can I get this book? This edition is published by Project Gutenberg as a free eBook resource, and the English original can be obtained on its platform. The specific means of access are subject to what the platform actually provides.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Tarkington, Booth, 1869-1946 Author

Booth Tarkington (1869–1946) was an American novelist and playwright. The library holds 22 of his works, including The Magnificent Ambersons, Alice Adams, Penrod, Seventeen, The Midlander, Penrod and Sam, In the Arena: Stories of Political Life, and The Turmoil. His writing draws largely on small-town life in the American Midwest, and he is known for his delicate, humorous portrayals of adolescent growth and family change, often touching on social manners during periods of transition. Both The Magnificent Ambersons and Alice Adams won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: the former uses the rise and fall of a family to reflect a changing era, while the latter depicts a young woman's struggles under social pressure. Both remain important works of American realism. Public information is limited, so full biographical details are not expanded here.