Drawn from our best-selling anthology The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature, Literature to Go is a brief and inexpensive collection of stories, poems, and plays accompanied by thorough critical reading and writing support. With literature from many periods, cultures, and diverse voices, the book is also a complete guide to close reading, critical thinking, and thoughtful writing about literature. The fourth edition features 132 new, carefully chosen stories, poems, and plays--continuing the anthology's mission to present literature as a living, changing art form.
 
MICHAEL MEYER (Ph.D., University of Connecticut) has taught introductory writing and literature courses for almost 30 years -- since 1981 at the University of Connecticut and earlier at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and The College of William and Mary. Meyer's scholarly articles have appeared in American Literature, Studies in the American Renaissance, and Virginia Quarterly Review. An internationally recognized authority on Henry David Thoreau, he is a former president of the Thoreau Society and the co-author (with Walter Harding) of The New Thoreau Handbook, a standard reference source. His first book, Several More Lives to Live: Thoreau's Political Reputation in America, was awarded the Ralph Henry Gabriel Prize by the American Studies Association. In addition to several introductory literature texts for Bedford/St. Martin's, Meyer is also editor of Frederick Douglass: The Narrative and Selected Writings and the author of The Little, Brown Guide to Writing Research Papers.