Twenty-Six Men and a Girl, published in 1902, is considered Gorki's best short story. It describes the brutal conditions of a provincial bakery.

Anna Karenina, written By Leo Tolstoy in 1877, is one of the most widely read Russian novels ever, and considered an artisitic masterpiece. This story of love, romance, deceit and jealousy is characteristic of traditional Russian themes in literature.

Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard was, like The Lower Depths, produced by Stanislavsky's Moscow Arts Theatre. Written in 1904, Chekhov's characters are dominated by an atmosphere of hopelessness and disillusionment, much the way Gorki's characters are.

Beween 1930 and 1937, reform-oriented John Dos Passes wrote his U.S.A. trilogy, The 42nd Parallel, 1911, and The Big Money. These experimental novels paint a portrait of America through stream of consciousness and news articles.

Upton Sinclair's The Jungle (1906) shocked the world with its gruesome depiction...