Books from Jake Gyllenhaal

Another Country

Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American ReadSet in Greenwich Village, Harlem, and France, among other locales, Another Country is a novel of passions--sexual, racial, political, artistic--that is stunning for its emotional intensity and haunting sensuality, depicting men and women, blacks and whites, stripped of their masks of gender and race by love and hatred at the most elemental and sublime.
Jake Gyllenhaal
Actor
This book was everything to me, when I read it.
Books from Jake Gyllenhaal

The Poems of Wilfred Owen

With an Introduction and Notes by Owen Knowles, University of Hull. In his draft Preface, Wilfred Owen includes his well-known statement 'My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity'. All of his important poems were written in just over a year, and 'Dulce et Decorum Est', 'S.I.W.', 'Futility' and 'Anthem for Doomed Youth' still have an astonishing power to move the reader. Owen pointed out that 'All a poet can do today is to warn. That is why all true Poets must be truthful'. His warning was based on his acute observation of the soldiers with whom he served on the Western Front, and his poems reflect the horror and the waste of the First World War. This volume contains all Owen's best-known poems, only four of which were published in his lifetime. He was killed a week before the Armistice in November 1918.
Jake Gyllenhaal
Actor
Gyllenhaal read the poem "Dulce et Decorum Est," by Wilfred Owen, to the guests gathered to support improving comprehensive mental-health care for veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Each of the evening's featured speakers shared a war-themed piece that touched on the hardships a family faces when a loved one enlists, enters combat and then returns home to uncertain circumstances or in poor physical or mental shape.
Books from Jake Gyllenhaal

Nine Stories

"Presents nine short stories by twentieth-century American author J.D. Salinger, most shadowed by the legacy of war." *** "This collection of stories deals mainly with sensitive and troubled adolescents and children."
Jake Gyllenhaal
Actor
Gyllenhaal's production company, Nine Stories, is named for the Salinger collection, his favorite being ''Teddy.''Gyllenhaal's production company, Nine Stories, is named for the Salinger collection, his favorite being ''Teddy.''
Books from Jake Gyllenhaal

To Kill a Mockingbird

"Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird." A lawyer's advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of Harper Lee's classic novel--a black man charged with the rape of a white girl. Through the young eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, Harper Lee explores with rich humor and unswerving honesty the irrationality of adult attitudes toward race and class in the Deep South of the 1930s. The conscience of a town steeped in prejudice, violence, and hypocrisy is pricked by the stamina and quiet heroism of one man's struggle for justice--but the weight of history will only tolerate so much. One of the best-loved classics of all time, To Kill a Mockingbird has earned many distinctions since its original publication in 1960. It has won the Pulitzer Prize, been translated into more than forty languages, sold more than thirty million copies worldwide, and been made into an enormously popular movie. Most recent, librarians across the country gave the book the highest of honors by voting it the best novel of the century (Library Journal). HarperCollins is proud to celebrate the anniversary of the book's publication with this special hardcover edition.
Jake Gyllenhaal
Actor
Gyllenhaal told Anne-Marie Minhall about his love of her classic novel To Kill a Mockingbird. He has even named his two dogs Atticus and Boo Radley after characters from the book.
Books from Jake Gyllenhaal

John Adams

In this powerful, epic biography, David McCullough unfolds the adventurous life journey of John Adams, the brilliant, fiercely independent, often irascible, always honest Yankee patriot who spared nothing in his zeal for the American Revolution; who rose to become the second president of the United States and saved the country from blundering into an unnecessary war; who was learned beyond all but a few and regarded by some as "out of his senses"; and whose marriage to the wise and valiant Abigail Adams is one of the most moving love stories in American history. This is history on a grand scale -- a book about politics and war and social issues, but also about human nature, love, religious faith, virtue, ambition, friendship, and betrayal, and the far-reaching consequences of noble ideas. Above all, John Adams is an enthralling, often surprising story of one of the most important and fascinating Americans who ever lived.
Jake Gyllenhaal
Actor
Gyllenhaal has been rereading David McCullough’s biography of the second US president, John Adams, and is unsettling himself by noticing the “surprising and terrifying correlations in America to the civil war and pre-civil war times”.