For over a century--since its appearance on the American literary scene --realism has presented challenges to those who have attempted to define it as a genre.

First Published in 2006. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

America today faces a world more complicated than ever before, but our politicians have failed to envision a foreign policy that addresses our greatest threats.

Ever since William Dean Howells declared his "realism war" in the 1880s, literary historians have regarded the rise of "realism" and "naturalism" as the great d