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By: Gene Stratton-Porter (1863-1924) | |
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Moths of the Limberlost
Gene Stratton-Porter was an American author, amateur naturalist, wildlife photographer, specializing in the birds and moths in one of the last of the vanishing wetlands of the lower Great Lakes Basin. The Limberlost and Wildflower Woods of northeastern Indiana were the laboratory and inspiration for her stories, novels, essays, photography, and movies. She was an accomplished author, artist and photographer and is generally considered to be one of the first female authors to promulgate public positions; conserving the Limberlost Swamp in her case... |
By: Robert Michael Ballantyne (1825-1894) | |
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The Madman And The Pirate
R. M. Ballantyne (April 24, 1825 – February 8, 1894) was a Scottish juvenile fiction writer. Born Robert Michael Ballantyne in Edinburgh, he was part of a famous family of printers and publishers. At the age of 16 he went to Canada and was six years in the service of the Hudson’s Bay Company. He returned to Scotland in 1847, and published his first book the following year, Hudson’s Bay: or, Life in the Wilds of North America. For some time he was employed by Messrs Constable, the publishers, but in 1856 he gave up business for the profession of literature, and began the series of adventure stories for the young with which his name is popularly associated. |
By: Samuel B. Harding (1866-1927) | |
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The Story of the Middle Ages
Intended for children 11 to 14 years old, The Story of the Middle Ages relates a little known period of history in an interesting and entertaining way. The author terms the Middle Ages as that period in the history of Europe between the fifth and fifteenth centuries. Its beginning is marked by the decline and fall of the mighty Roman Empire and its end is generally thought to be the dawn of the Renaissance or the Age of Discovery. The Middle Ages are also divided by historians into the Early, High and Late Middle Ages... | |
By: Garrett P. Serviss (1851-1929) | |
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Curiosities of the Sky
Is there intelligent life on Mars? Why are there starless gaps in the Milky Way? What creates the Aurora Borealis or the Northern Lights? These and more are the interesting questions that are asked and sought to be answered in the 1909 book, Curiosities of the Sky by Garrett P. Serviss. Garrett Putnam Serviss was an American astronomer and popular sci-fi writer. He believed that science should be understood and enjoyed by everyone, not just by scientists. Though he was trained as a lawyer, he went to work as a newspaper reporter with The New York Sun in 1867... |
By: John Muir (1838-1914) | |
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The Yosemite
Anyone who's ever visited the Yosemite National Park will find this book a treasure trove of descriptions, information and evocations of the fabled beauty of this amazing piece of heaven on earth! The Yosemite by John Muir was published in 1912. Born in Scotland, England, this world-famous conservationist was a multi-talented genius. He was a geologist, naturalist, engineer, writer, botanist and a passionate and prolific writer on the preservation of the natural environment. His family migrated to America when he was just a few years old, the third of eight boisterous children... | |
The Mountains of California
First published in 1894, this wonderful travelogue by a famed naturalist and conservationist still remains a book that delights and informs its readers. The Mountains of California by John Muir recounts the author's exploration of the Yosemite Valley, Mount Whitney, the famed sequoia forests and King's Canyon among other places of immense natural beauty. Written in his characteristic zestful style, with a deep understanding and respect for nature, the book is a treasure trove of geography, geology, botany, biology and sheer love of the magical planet we live in... | |
My First Summer in the Sierra
The journal of nature-lover John Muir who spent the summer of 1869 walking California’s Sierra Nevada range. From French Bar to Mono Lake and the Yosemite Valley, Muir was awestruck by everything he saw. The antics of the smallest “insect people” amazed him as much as stunted thousand-year old Juniper trees growing with inconceivable tenacity from tiny cracks in the stone. Muir spent the rest of his life working to preserve the high Sierra, believing that “the clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.” John Muir (1838-1914) was born in Dunbar, Scotland and grew up in Wisconsin, USA. This recording commemorates the 140th anniversary of that first summer. | |
The Story of My Boyhood and Youth
“The only fire for the whole house was the kitchen stove, with a fire box about eighteen inches long and eight inches wide and deep,- scant space for three or four small sticks, around which in hard zero weather all the family of ten shivered, and beneath which in the morning we found our socks and coarse, soggy boots frozen solid.” Thus, with perceptive eye for detail, the American naturalist, John Muir, describes life on a pioneer Wisconsin farm in the 1850’s. Muir was only eleven years old when his father uprooted the family from a relatively comfortable life in Dunbar, Scotland, to settle in the backwoods of North America... | |
Travels in Alaska
In 1879 John Muir went to Alaska for the first time. Its stupendous living glaciers aroused his unbounded interest, for they enabled him to verify his theories of glacial action. Again and again he returned to this continental laboratory of landscapes. The greatest of the tide-water glaciers appropriately commemorates his name. Upon this book of Alaska travels, all but finished before his unforeseen departure, John Muir expended the last months of his life. | |
Steep Trails
A collection of Muir's previously unpublished essays, released shortly after his death. "This volume will meet, in every way, the high expectations of Muir's readers. The recital of his experiences during a stormy night on the summit of Mount Shasta will take rank among the most thrilling of his records of adventure. His observations on the dead towns of Nevada, and on the Indians gathering their harvest of pine nuts, recall a phase of Western life that has left few traces in American literature... | |
Stickeen
A great dog story, a well told tale — the naturalist and adventurer John Muir recounts how he and his companion, a dog named Stickeen, each, alone, confronted and conquered their fears of an icy Alaskan glacier in 1880. |
By: John Galsworthy (1867-1933) | |
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John Galsworthy Works |
By: William E. B. Du Bois (1868-1963) | |
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The Souls of Black Folk
“Few books make history and fewer still become the foundational texts for the movements and struggles of an entire people....” One such great work was The Souls of Black Folk by William EB Du Bois. Published in 1903, it is a powerful and hard-hitting view of sociology, race and American history. It became the cornerstone of the civil rights movement and when Du Bois attended the first National Negro Conference in 1909, he was already well-known as a proponent of full and unconditional equality for African Americans... |
By: Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) | |
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Madame Bovary
The strands woven together in Gustave Flaubert's famous, path breaking 1856 novel Madame Bovary include a provincial town in Normandy, France, a shy young doctor with an indifferent career and a lovely young woman who lives in a fantasy world based on the innumerable romantic novels she reads. Of course there is also the story of a dull marriage punctuated by passionate, adulterous love affairs. First published in serial form in a Parisian magazine and deemed to be the “perfect” novel, Flaubert's debut was received by both readers and critics with acclaim and admiration... |
By: John Donne (1572-1631) | |
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Devotions upon Emergent Occasions
Devotions upon Emergent Occasions is a 1624 prose work by the English writer John Donne. It is a series of reflections that were written as Donne recovered from a serious illness, believed to be either typhus or relapsing fever. (Donne does not clearly identify the disease in his text.) The work consists of twenty-three parts describing each stage of the sickness. Each part is further divided into a Meditation, an Expostulation, and a Prayer. The seventeenth meditation is perhaps the best-known part of the work... |
By: Saint Augustine of Hippo (354-420) | |
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The City of God
Rome having been stormed and sacked by the Goths under Alaric their king, the worshipers of false gods, or pagans, as we commonly call them, made an attempt to attribute this calamity to the Christian religion, and began to blaspheme the true God with even more than their wonted bitterness and acerbity. It was this which kindled my zeal for the house of God, and prompted me to undertake the defense of the city of God against the charges and misrepresentations of its assailants. This work was in my hands for several years, owing to the interruptions occasioned by many other affairs which had a prior claim on my attention, and which I could not defer... | |
Confessions
Confessions (Latin: Confessiones) is the name of an autobiographical work, consisting of 13 books, by St. Augustine of Hippo, written between AD 397 and AD 398. Modern English translations of it are sometimes published under the title The Confessions of St. Augustine in order to distinguish the book from other books with similar titles, such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Confessions. | |
The Enchiridion
The Enchiridion, Manual, or Handbook of Augustine of Hippo is alternatively titled, “Faith, Hope, and Love”. The Enchiridion is a compact treatise on Christian piety, written in response to a request by an otherwise unknown person, named Laurentis, shortly after the death of Saint Jerome in 420. It is intended as a model for Christian instruction or catechesis. – As the title indicates, the work is organized according to the three graces necessary for the Christian worship of God: Faith, Hope and Love... |
By: William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863) | |
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The Book of Snobs
The necessity of a work on Snobs, demonstrated from History, and proved by felicitous illustrations:—I am the individual destined to write that work—My vocation is announced in terms of great eloquence—I show that the world has been gradually preparing itself for the WORK and the MAN—Snobs are to be studied like other objects of Natural Science, and are a part of the Beautiful (with a large B). They pervade all classes—Affecting instance of Colonel Snobley. |
By: Joseph Trienens (b. 1863) | |
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The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing
Written in 1910, this “cyclopedia” is full of information that was quite useful at the time. A hundred years later, its text is more humorous than practical — although some advice never goes out of style. |
By: Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?) | |
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The Devil's Dictionary
RESPECTABILITY, n. The offspring of a liaison between a bald head and a bank account. BEAUTY, n. The power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband. LITIGANT, n. A person about to give up his skin for the hope of retaining his bones. If these caustic definitions catch your fancy, you'd enjoy The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce. He was a columnist with the San Francisco News Letter, a weekly paper which was a business publication aimed at the corporate sector. However, it had a column entitled Town Crier which featured satirical asides and comments in a lighter vein... | |
Write it Right
Witty, opinionated alphabetical examples of what Bierce considered poor (American) English and advice on alternatives – entertaining, thought-provoking, occasionally outdated but so interesting to see how style and taste have changed. |
By: Hendrik van Loon | |
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The Story of Mankind
A book that won the Newberry Prize in 1921 for an Outstanding Contribution in Children's Literature, The Story of Mankind, by Hendrik van Loon is indeed a classic that has been enjoyed by generations of children and adults. The book is an engagingly written work, dedicated to the author Hendrik van Loon's two young son's Hansje and Willem. It was created to convey the history of the human race to young people in a way that was interesting, memorable and would spur them onto further research and reading into the subject... |
By: Olive Green | |
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How to Cook Fish
One hundred simple fish sauces. Sixty-five ways to cook mackerel. The Catching of Unshelled Fish. Twenty-seven ways to Cook Frogslegs. Now that should certainly make you reach for your apron and fish knife! How to Cook Fish by Olive Green is a vintage culinary classic, filled with simple, easy to follow recipes rendered in a terse, no nonsense style. There's none of this fiddling with scales, weights and measures. What you get is a mélange of interesting, unusual ways to cook seafood without worrying about lists of ingredients, timings, temperature or any of the conventions followed by traditional cookbooks... |
By: Vachel Lindsay (1879-1931) | |
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The Art of the Moving Picture
"This 1922 book by poet and sometime cultural critic Vachel Lindsay might have been the first to treat the then-new medium of moving pictures as an art form, one that was potentially as rich, complex, mysterious as far older ones, and whose physical and aesthetic properties were only starting to be understood. The highlight of the book might be “The Motion Picture of Fairy Splendor,” which examines the relationship between film storytelling, magic, myths, legends and bedtime stories. It’s discombobulating, in a good way, to read Lindsay’s attempts to grapple with what, precisely, cinema is... |
By: Andrew Murray (1828-1917) | |
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Absolute Surrender and Other Addresses
This is a series of short messages written by the South African minister, Andrew Murray. They deal with the necessity and joy of surrendering our lives completely to God. | |
Humility : The Beauty of Holiness
A book on the all importance of humility, how Jesus was humble, and how we also can become humble. Murray wrote “Without humility, there can be no true abiding in God’s presence or experience of His favor and the power of His spirit. Without it there can be no abiding faith or love or joy or strength.” | |
With Christ in the School of Prayer
It is under a deep impression that the place and power of prayer in the Christian life is too little understood, that this book has been written. I feel sure that as long as we look on prayer chiefly as the means of maintaining our own Christian life, we shall not know fully what it is meant to be. But when we learn to regard it as the highest part of the work entrusted to us, the root and strength of all other work, we shall see that there is nothing that we so need to study and practise as the art of praying aright... | |
The School of Obedience
Andrew Murray describes the necessity and benefits of absolute obedience to God. He goes on to explain the way to achieve this level of obedience, which is required of all believers, and attainable through God’s provision. |
By: Thomas Paine | |
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The Age of Reason
A Universalist book, The Age of Reason advocates for the existence of natural religion and challenges the structure of all organized religion. First written and distributed as pamphlets, the book was later published into two parts. Paine puts forward his personal beliefs, debating reason and revelation, while analyzing the Bible and the influence organized religion has on society. Exploring topics including natural religion, criticism of corrupt religious institutions, and distinction between rationality and blind faith in the supernatural, the book presents a guide for the conscious and free spiritual thinkers... |
By: John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) | |
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On Liberty
Published in 1859, On Liberty is a libertarian philosophical work by English philosopher John Stuart Mill that endorses his view on the importance of individuality for the constant progression and improvement of society. The work also supports economic and moral freedom, and openly criticizes the influence of social authority that in one way or another imposes a predefined set of acceptable attitudes and opinions. Highlighting issues including the incongruity between authority and liberty, the oppressive... | |
Essays on Some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy
This is Mill’s first work on economics. It foreshadows his Political Economy which was the standard Anglo-American Economics textbook of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Mill’s economic theory moved from free market capitalism, to government intervention within the precepts of Utilitarianism, and finally to Socialism. |