Bent is an influential postwar play about Max, a gay man in 1930s Germany who is arrested along with his partner Rudy and taken to a concentration camp. Max denies his sexuality, pretending to be Jewish instead, and is forced to murder Rudy. While in the camp, he meets another gay inmate, and two begin a relationship in which they can never touch each other for fear of being caught. Shockingly graphic for its time, this play explores the themes of sexuality, identity, and unconventional rebellion.
A personal record of his life by one of the most influential of America's Founding Fathers, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin follows Franklin's life from his boyhood in Boston to his involvement in the French and Indian War during the 1750s. Although Franklin is perhaps best known as one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, the report leaves off almost twenty years before the Revolutionary War. Left unfinished, Franklin's memoirs are nonetheless one of the most influential examples of early autobiography.