This is the sixth volume of the 15-volume series of The World’s Story: a history of the World in story, song and art, edited by Eva March Tappan. Each book is a compilation of selections from prose literature, poetry and pictures and offers a comprehensive presentation of the world's history, art and culture, from the early times till the beginning of the 20th century. Topics in Part VI include the Russian Empire, the fights for independence in Hungary and the Balkan states and the politics of early Turkey...

If you have ever wondered why Spain was first to “settle” the Golden State, this book is for you. Professor Chapman has produced a comprehensive and highly entertaining popular history of “the Californias,” beginning with a nod to geography and the native races and carrying on through to the arrival of Old Glory in 1848. What might in less capable hands have proved a heavy historical loaf to digest is lightened and leavened with the yeast of “interesting incident” throughout. Consider...

"He was a stranger in Matcham, a 'foreigner' as the villagers called such alien visitors. He had never been in the village before, knew nothing of its inhabitants or its surroundings, its customs, ways, local prejudices, produce, trade, scandals, hates, loves, subserviencies, gods, or devils , and yet henceforward he was to be closely allied with Matcham, for a certain bachelor uncle had lately died and left him a small estate within a mile of the village."

A young man travels to South Africa to find his Mother and sister. He wants to be a clergyman and a farmer when he arrives there. This story includes accounts of the Zulu-Boer wars. - Summary by Ingrid Kennedy

Everything about the sea: history of ships, famous mariners and life on shipboard, adventure, shipwrecks and daring rescues. - Summary by Kikisaulite

Following the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the time of Henry VIII, a significant part of the buildings of Torre Abbey, particularly the church area, lay in ruins. Then, during the 17th century and subsequently, surviving parts of the abbey were incorporated into the creation of a grand private residence, the owner of which in the early part of the 20th century was Colonel Lucius Cary. With the permission of the colonel, Hugh Watkin, who at that time was living in the Chelston district of Torquay, fairly close to the abbey, undertook certain excavations of the remaining ruins between the years of 1906 and 1911...

Each summer, in the ancient hill town of Siena, Italy, there erupts one of the most extraordinary, exciting, and dangerous horse races in the world— the Palio. So furious is the rivalry that it is often said the Palio is more battle than race, and that "Fate is the Queen of the Palio." This magnificent book is a true story of the Palio —a thrilling, heart-stirring tale of a boy and a beautiful half-Arabian mare who won undying fame. Marguerite Henry tells—as only she can—how the life of Giorgio Terni, a boy of the Maremma marshes, became linked in strange and dramatic fashion with that of the cart horse Gaudenzia, whose Arabian blood brought her into the contest of the Palio...

Between the former site of old Fort Dearborn and the present site of our newest Board of Trade there lies a restricted yet tumultuous territory through which, during the course of the last fifty years, the rushing streams of commerce have worn many a deep and rugged chasm. These great canons—conduits, in fact, for the leaping volume of an ever-increasing prosperity—cross each other with a sort of systematic rectangularity, and in deference to the practical directness of local requirements they are in general called simply—streets...

Volume II of this popular history opens in the revolutionary year, 1848, with the Chartist movement for manhood suffrage and with the rise of Young Ireland. Next we join the crowds in 1851 at the opening of the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park, of which Queen Victoria wrote, ''A little rain fell just as we started, but before we came near the Crystal Palace the sun shone and gleamed upon the gigantic edifice, upon which the flags of all nations were floating.'' Hopes for a new era of peace expired in...

Sir Walter Besant was a prolific novelist and historian. He wrote Fifty Years Ago to present a picture of life, manners, and society in Great Britain as it was when Queen Victoria ascended to the throne. In 1837, the seeds of new technology and new ideas were present and monumental changes from the ways of the 1700's were about to be felt. Starting first in London and over several decades, the progress moved outwards to the country towns of the British Isles. - Summary by Gary Clayton

Marine Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler's expose of American Corporate Imperialism. Butler said, “I served in all commissioned ranks from second lieutenant to Major General. And during that period I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street, and for the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism. I suspected I was just part of the racket all the time. Now I am sure of it.” - Summary by John Greenman and https://www.americanswhotellthetruth.org/portraits/major-general-smedley-butler

These simple stories of two of England’s greatest cathedrals were originally written for youth but adults will also enjoy them. St. Paul’s Cathedral, London, and Canterbury Cathedral in Kent County are central to the story of England, especially church history though not exclusively so. Here are stories of great spiritual leaders, saints, sinners, politicians, kings, soldiers, murders, pilgrimages, common folks, peoples’ spiritualities, spiritual life, civil life. - Summary by david wales

This book tells the story of exploration in America in the words of the explorers themselves. It consists of extracts from narratives of the early discoverers and explorers of the American continent from the Northmen in 10th century to 17th century Massachusets Bay Colony. - Summary by Kikisaulite

The Author's own summary surveys “first the faint awakenings of American interest in the Spanish province of Alta California. The New England merchants traffic again along the sunlit, poorly guarded coast; the shadow of Russia hangs for a moment over San Francisco Bay; the hide and tallow vessels laboriously collect their cargoes at every little port...the first adventurous immigrants wind wearily down the mountain trails.... “Then the scene changes...English ambitions hold a threat of danger to the program of the United States; the Sacramento settlers raise the crude Bear Flag as a symbol of revolt; and finally a strong-willed President acquires California as the fruit of war...

A short study examining the historical framework of England from the period of the Norman Conquest to the end of the fifteenth century. The period from the Norman Conquest to the end of the fifteenth century may be conveniently and aptly labelled "Mediæval". Rich and varied as were the phases of its life, it has a certain homogeneity which marks it clearly off from the days before the Conquest and from the Tudor period.

A concise and comprehensive guide to the Byzantine empire from Constantine to its dissolution. Foord explores in an accessible manner why it was important to history, the significance of noteworthy events, and how it eventually fell. While sometimes describing the experience of the everyday people, he mainly focuses on the wars and policies of Byzantine emperors.

Excerpt from Preface: Their patriotic sacrifices were made with an enthusiasm that showed the earnest spirit ready on every occasion to appear in generous acts. Some gave their own property, and went from house to house to solicit contributions for the army. Colors were embroidered by fair hands, and presented with the charge never to desert them; and arms and ammunition were provided by the same liberal zeal. They formed themselves into associations renouncing the use of teas, and other imported luxuries, and engaging to card, spin, and weave their own clothing.

Charles A. Ward was considered one of the most knowledgeable in his studies of the prophecies of Nostradamus. Ward viewed the prophecies of Nostradamus as predictions that only make sense in hindsight, rather than a tool for predicting future events. This work includes Ward's theories regarding the methods of prediction and his theoretical belief that the predictions were sequential. Ward details only a few of the actual predictions of Nostradamus in his interpretations but attempts to shed light on his theoretical orientation in hopes of making them easier to understand for the reader. - Summary by CJ Plogue

The question most frequently asked me since I began my stay in South America has been: "Why do they have so many revolutions there?" Possibly the events recounted in the following pages may help the reader to answer this for himself. I hope that he will share my conviction that militarism has already definitely disappeared from more than half the continent and is slowly becoming less powerful in the remainder. Constitutional traditions, inherited from Spain and Portugal, implanted a tendency toward...

"Man's Rights; or, How Would You Like It?: Comprising Dreams" is the first known feminist utopian novel written by a woman. The text features nine dreams experienced by a first-person female narrator. In the first seven dreams, she visits the planet Mars, finding a society where traditional sex roles and stereotypes are reversed. The narrator witnesses the oppression of the men on Mars and their struggle for equality. In the last two dreams, the narrator visits a future United States ruled by a woman president.

This is Stowe's second book, another one depicting the horrors of southern slavery, published 4 years after Uncle Tom's Cabin and 5 years before the commencement of the Civil War, when new territories wanting admittance into the US , were vying to become slave states, threatening to spread the heinous system. While a work of fiction, the book successfully documents the horrors of the slave system, and depicts how some slaves escaped into the Dismal Swamp , where they often lived for years hiding from their pursuers, often in community...

In this second volume of his work on English rational theology in the seventeenth century, Tulloch describes the lives and works of the group of theologians known as the Cambridge Platonists. - Summary by Barry Ganong

This short, engaging volume summarizes the life of a priest who, intending to spark a lively academic debate by nailing 95 theses on a church door, unwittingly sets the continent aflame with the 1517 Reformation of the Catholic Church. - Summary by Elyse J. Wood

Preface Excerpt: "The following sketch of the course of the French Revolution was originally published during 1889 in serial form in "Justice," the weekly organ of the Social Democratic Federation. It has been revised, corrected, and, in some parts, added to, for the present re-issue. It need scarcely be said that it in no way pretends to be a complete history of the great political, social, and intellectual movement it describes. The present volume is designed primarily as a guide to those who,...

This 1898 collection of thirteen previously published articles exhibits the acute perception of one of the most popular writers of the late 19th-early 20th centuries. “These "Tales of the Trail" are based upon actual facts which came under the personal observation of the author… and will form another interesting series of stories of that era of great adventures, when the country west of the Missouri was unknown except to the trappers, hunters, and army officers.” Henry Inman was an American soldier, frontiersman, and author...

Written in 1908 by socialist critic and gay rights activist Edward Carpenter, The Intermediate Sex is a thoughtful, humanizing, and frequently utopian treatise on homosexuality that defies some of the period's more stultifying notions about human sexuality. In it, Carpenter argues for the legitimization of “uranianism,” recounts the history of homosexuality from antiquity to present day, highlights the great social and aesthetic work done by Uranians, and outlines some of the transformative social effects that might occur from a greater acceptance of homosexuality.

Ralph Keeler failed as a novelist, but this autobiography reflects a life well-lived with humor and adventure. Keeler was in the same literary circle as satirist Bret Harte, novelist Charles Warren Stoddard, editor Thomas Bailey Aldrich, and essayist William Dean Howells. He so impressed Mark Twain that Twain wrote an essay about him called "Ralph Keeler". In 1873, on his way to Cuba, he reportedly was thrown overboard by a Spanish loyalist who objected to his backing of the revolutionary, anti-Spanish movement. - Summary by John Greenman

John Woodhouse Audubon , son of the famous painter John James Audubon and an artist in his own right, joined Col. Henry Webb's California Company expedition in 1849. From New Orleans the expedition sailed to the Rio Grande; it headed west overland through northern Mexico and through Arizona to San Diego, California. Cholera and outlaws decimated the group. Many of them turned back, including the leader. Audubon assumed command of those remaining and they pushed on to California, although he was forced to abandon his paints and canvases in the desert…...

This history begins when Pizarro and Almagro, Valdivia and Benalcazar, led their desperadoes across the Isthmus to the conquest, massacre, and enslavement of the prosperous and civilised millions who inhabited the Pacific coast of South America. It ends with the United States opening a way through that same Isthmus for the ships, the trade, the capital of all the world; with American engineers laying railroad iron on the imperial highway of the Incas; with British bondholders forgiving stricken Peru's national debt; with their debtor bravely facing the fact of bankruptcy, and turning over to them all its railways.

The Wars of the Roses, 1377-1471, were a series of English civil wars fought for the control of the throne of England between two rival cadet branches of the House of Plantagenet, Lancaster and York. The Scottish historian, Robert Balmain Mowat writes that these wars saw "the death of the old England and the beginning of the new." But they also saw the emergence of great personalities: the noble Richard of York, Warwick the Kingmaker, King Edward IV, indolent and energetic by turns, and his relentless opponent, Margaret of Anjou, a true she-wolf of France.

Robert James Manion was a Canadian doctor who volunteered in the Canadian medical corps during World War I. This book is his memoir of the war. After the war he entered politics and served in several Canadian governments. The listener may note a lack of mention of the United States soldier; this is because the memoir was written before the entry of that country into the war. - Summary by David Wales

In a nineteenth century Sicilian fishing village, the Malavoglia family gambles everything on being able to profit from a cargo of lupin nuts. The cargo is lost at sea and a succession of misfortunes and tragedies assails the family. A masterpiece of social commentary hailed within Italy but neglected by the wider world, The House by the Medlar Tree ranks alongside the works of Zola, Dickens or Balzac among the great books of European literature. The book is the inspiration behind the 1948 film 'La Terra Trema' , one of the earliest works of the great Italian director Luchino Visconti. - Summary by Tom Denholm