Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, is Dee Brown's critically acclaimed 1970 account of the methodical annihilation of Native Americans by whites during the nineteenth century.

In Willa Cather's My Antonia (1918), a family of Bohemian immigrants confronts the hardships of pioneer life, including poverty and suicide, on the Nebraska plains.

The Last of the Mohicans (1826) is James Fennimore Cooper's classic tale of nobility and frontier adventure during the French and Indian War.

In A Doll's House (1879), one of the realistic plays for which Henrik Ibsen is best known, Nora Helmer courageously cuts herself loose from her degrading marriage of eight years to seek an independent life.

Mark Twain humorously recalls his escapades during a stagecoach journey through the American Midwest in Roughing It (1872).

Kristin Lavransdatter (1920-22) is Nobel Prizewinner Sigrid Unset's trilogy of love and religion set in medieval Norway.