George Orwell

Known to legions of middle and high school students as the author of Animal Farm, Eric Blair - better known as George Orwell - was even a better writer than than you might think from reading this amusing but - alas - now rather useless book. Ironically, it's the very uselessness of the novel and its successor, George's opus magnus 1984, that ensures they will be required reading in America's schools and will continue to be enthusiastically hailed by the very people whose praising would have left George a-gagging.

To find out why if George were alive - to paraphrase Yogi Berra - he'd be rolling over in his grave, click here.