Walter Waddington Shirley was made Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History and Canon of Christ Church, Oxford in 1863. This short work comprises the text of a lecture he gave at Oxford University in January, 1866. In it, he describes the historical setting in which scholasticism flourished and then summarizes its features. - Summary by Barry Ganong

Abraham Lincoln came to the presidency under a heavy shroud of uncertainty, not only about his threatened life but, of course, the very existence of the United States, which was already falling apart. Ward Hill Lamon was, in effect, his first Secret Service agent, his security guard and this biography, heavily edited by his daughter, Dorothy Lamon sets down for posterity many details surrounding Lincoln's near-fatal journey to his inauguration, how he dealt with day to day presidential decisions and a wide range of interpersonal relationships with the visionaries, schemers and power brokers surrounding him. - Summary by John Greenman

Ward Muir brings us into the heart of an English war hospital, describing scenes of cleanliness, triumph, order and sadness. Through the eyes of the orderly we get to see the processes that kept the wards running, and relive some tales from within the hospital walls.

Apart from "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" - the pieces which made both Irving and The Sketch Book famous - other tales include "Roscoe", "The Broken Heart", "The Art of Book-making", "A Royal Poet", "The Spectre Bridegroom", "Westminster Abbey", "Little Britain", and "John Bull". His stories were highly influenced by German folktales, with "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" being inspired by a folktale recorded by Karl Musaus. Stories range from the maudlin (such as "The Wife" and...

This is a collection of essays, verbal sketches, and stories by Washington Irving. Irving lived at the Alhambra Palace while writing some of the material for his book. In 1828, Washington Irving traveled from Madrid, where he had been staying, to Granada, Spain. At first sight, he described it as "a most picturesque and beautiful city, situated in one of the loveliest landscapes that I have ever seen." He immediately asked the then-governor of the historic Alhambra Palace as well as the archbishop of Granada for access to the palace, which was granted because of Irving's celebrity status...

Watkin Tench was an officer of the British Marines in the First Fleet to settle NSW. This is an interesting and entertaining account of his experiences during that time (Introduction by Tabithat)

This is a careful and fascinating collection of interviews with people who knew Lincoln as a boy and young man. A glimpse into the type of person he was from the very beginning. "All the world loves a lover"—and Abraham Lincoln loved everybody. With all his brain and brawn, his real greatness was in his heart. He has been called "the Great-Heart of the White House," and there is little doubt that more people have heard about him than there are who have read of the original "Great-Heart" in "The Pilgrim's Progress...

An alphabet of historical characters presented in poetical form!In their original form, the contents of this book appeared in the Chicago Sunday Tribune, which newspaper is hereby thanked for the privilege of reproducing this Alphabet

STORIES OF LATER AMERICAN HISTORYBy WILBUR F. GORDYPREFACEThis book, like Stories of Early American History, follows somewhat closely the course of study prepared by the Committee of Eight, the present volume covering the topics outlined for Grade V, while the earlier one includes the material suggested for Grade IV. It was the plan of that committee to take up in these grades, largely in a biographical way, a great part of the essential facts of American history; and with this plan the author, who was a member of that committee, was in hearty accord...

This volume contains the principal hero-lays of the six great epic cycles of the Teutonic Middle Ages: The Langobardian Legends, the Amelung and Kindred Legends; Dietrich of Bern's Adventures; the Nibelung Legends; the Hegeling Legends; and Beowulf. To them, the author has added the great mythical Carolingian cycle, which centred round the persons of Charlemagne and his heroes, and the Breton ones of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, as well as the legend of the Holy Grail. Therefore, this one book tells all of the great epic and romances of the Middle Ages in accessible language for the general public.

Captain Glazier narrates his experiences as a cavalryman in the Federal Army during the Civil War, from his enlistment in New York State to his capture at the battle of Brandy Station.

Nothing seems to be known about Mr and Mrs William Platt, the writers of Stories of the Scottish Border. What they produced is an eccentric guidebook and history, seen partly through the ballads of the region. The book recounts the military stratagems, treachery and courage of those who struggled for control of the Border lands and of the whole country, and tells of the triumphs or tragic fate of those who took part on both sides. It also tells us stories of the Border Reivers, raiders who lived by riding out and stealing their neighbours’ livestock...

This work describes conditions and forces the black population of the South faced after freedom was brought by the Civil War. As Sinclair puts it at the outset of his book, ". . . the chief efforts of Southern leadership have been to curtail the freedom of the colored people, to minimize their liberty and reduce them as nearly as possible to the condition of chattel slaves." - Summary by Jim Locke

By Zorra, in the following sketches, is meant a little district in Oxford county, Ontario, some ten miles square, composed of part of East and part of West Zorra, and containing a population of about fourteen hundred. It was settled about the year 1830, chiefly by Highlanders from Sutherlandshire, Scotland.Within the last forty years there have gone from this district over one hundred young men who have made their mark in the world. With most of these it has been the writer's good fortune to be personally and intimately acquainted; and companionship with some of them has been to him a pleasure and a benefit...

History Of The American Negro In The Great World WarHis Splendid Record In The Battle Zones Of Europe By W. Allison Sweeney Contributing Editor Of The Chicago Defender. CHAPTER I. SPIRITUAL EMANCIPATION OF NATIONS. The march of civilization is attended by strange influences. Providence which directs the advancement of mankind, moves in such mysterious ways that none can sense its design or reason out its import. Frequently the forces of evil are turned to account in defeating their own objects. Great tragedies, cruel wars, cataclysms of woe, have acted as enlightening and refining agents...

“The Surgeon of the late illustrious Lord NELSON feels himself called upon, from the responsible situation which he held on the eventful day of the 21st of October 1805, to lay before the British Nation the following Narrative. It contains an account of the most interesting incidents which occurred on board the Victory. (Lord NELSON’s flag-ship) from the time of her sailing from England, in the month of September, till the day of battle inclusively”. – William Beatty

A Voyage to the South Sea, undertaken by command of His Majesty, for the purpose of conveying the Bread-fruit tree to the West Indies, in His Majesty’s ship The Bounty, commanded by Lieutenant William Bligh. Including an account of the Mutiny on board the said ship, and the subsequent voyage of part of the crew, in the ship’s boat, from Tofoa, one of the Friendly Islands, to Timor, a Dutch settlement in the East Indies.

The journal of William Bradford, who served five terms as governor of the Plymouth colony, is an indispensable document of the events of early American history. His eyewitness account includes the stories of the Pilgrims’ sojourn in the Netherlands, the voyage of the Mayflower, the hardships of the New World, relations with the Indians, and the colony’s growth from an endangered enterprise to a thriving city. This edition of Bradford’s Of Plimoth Plantation presents the text in language made more accessible to the modern reader

A story about the Irish, just before the onset of the famine of 1847, with all the color and dialogue of a man who lived it.

William Caruthers was a retired newspaperman who spent 25 years listening to stories told by the inhabitants of Death Valley. This 1951 book collects those stories; the printed version has many interesting pictures. ''Of the actors who made the history of the period, few remain. It was the writer’s good fortune that many of these men were his friends. It is the romance, the comedy, the often stark tragedy these men left along the trail which you will find in the pages that follow.''

Compiled by William Coleman the first editor of the New York Evening Post, this book includes items that trace a path leading to the death of Alexander Hamilton. Additionally, it includes orations, sermons, and eulogies written about Hamilton's life and character. - Summary by Kristin Hand

Recollections of Life in Ohio is the autobiography of William Cooper Howells (1807-1894), father of the American novelist William Dean Howells. The Howells were Welsh woolen mill owners. William Cooper's father brought the family to America in 1808--at a time when Great Britain actually forbid skilled workmen from emigrating, thus putting the father's practical knowledge of mill machinery in great demand. Small scale industries--paper and woolen mills, flour mills, and distilleries were sprouting apace with farms in the newly opened lands of Ohio, where the Howells settled in 1813...

William Dean Howells (1837-1920) became fast friends with Mark Twain from the moment in 1869 when Twain strode into the office of The Atlantic Monthly in Boston to thank Howells, then its assistant editor, for his favorable review of Innocents Abroad. When Howells became editor a few years later, The Atlantic Monthly began serializing many of Twain’s works, among them his non-fiction masterpiece, Life on the Mississippi. In My Mark Twain, Howells pens a literary memoir that includes such fascinating scenes as their meetings with former president Ulysses Grant who was then writing the classic autobiography that Twain would underwrite in the largest publishing deal until that time...

A charming brief account of a two months' autumnal stay on the shores of the Lake of Geneva. Howells, who was there with his family traveling from England to Italy, has a sharp eye not only for scenery and architecture, but for people and customs, both Swiss and foreign.

Hawai'i: land of wonder and beauty and a culture rich in history and mythology. Dr. Westervelt settled in Hawai'i as a young man and collected stories and myths from his adopted home. Here we have a collection dedicated to the largest city, Honolulu. - Summary by Lynne Thompson

Clarissa Harlowe Barton was a pioneering American nurse who founded the American Red Cross. She was a hospital nurse in the American Civil War, a teacher, and a patent clerk. Since nursing education was not then very formalized and she did not attend nursing school, she provided self-taught nursing care. Barton is noteworthy for doing humanitarian work and civil rights advocacy at a time before women had the right to vote. She was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1973. Volume 1 ends during the years just after the end of the Civil War.

Clarissa Harlowe Barton was a pioneering American nurse who founded the American Red Cross. She was a hospital nurse in the American Civil War, a teacher, and a patent clerk. Since nursing education was not then very formalized and she did not attend nursing school, she provided self-taught nursing care. Barton is noteworthy for doing humanitarian work and civil rights advocacy at a time before women had the right to vote. She was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1973.Volume 2...

Everywhere on earth the fairy world of each country is older and perhaps more enduring than the one we see and feel and tread upon. So I tell in this book the folk lore of the Korean people, and of the behavior of the particular kind of fairies that inhabit the Land of Morning Splendor.

William Elliot Griffis born in Philadelphia in 1843, was an educator, author and Congregational minister. In 1870 he was invited to go to Japan in order to modernize the school system and became the Superintendent of Education in the Province of Echizen. Whilst there he became interested in the folk lore, legends and stories of the East and began to collect tales from the story tellers that he met with and the literature that he found there. The thirty four wonderful stories in this collection are some of the ones that he found and fortunately decided to share with us...

It was Godwin, in his Enquiry concerning Political Justice , who was the first to formulate the political and economical conceptions of anarchism, even though he did not give that name to the ideas developed in his remarkable work. Laws, he wrote, are not a product of the wisdom of our ancestors: they are the product of their passions, their timidity, their jealousies and their ambition. The remedy they offer is worse than the evils they pretend to cure. - Summary by Peter Kropotkin

A short biography of the 20th U.S. President. Garfield was raised in humble circumstances on an Ohio farm by his widowed mother and elder brother. Before he was elected president in the Republican party he was first elected to Congress in 1862 as Representative of the 19th District of Ohio. Then to the Senate in 1880. His presidency lasted just 200 days—from March 4, 1881, until his death on September 19, 1881, as a result of being shot by assassin Charles J. Guiteau on July 2, 1881.

Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold,And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;Round many western islands have I beenWhich bards in fealty to Apollo hold.Oft of one wide expanse had I been toldThat deep-brow’d Homer ruled as his demesne;Yet never did I breathe its pure sereneTill I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold.Then felt I like some watcher of the skiesWhen a new planet swims into his ken;Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyesHe star’d at the Pacific – and all his menLook’d at each other with a wild surmise -Silent, upon a peak in Darien...