Bobby is a little orphan boy of about 5 who discovers he has somehow lost his 'birfhday' and decides to go looking for it. This epic quest takes him into strange places and meetings with people who are sometimes scoffing, but mostly kind and helpful to the small tot. Does he find his birfday? Well I can't tell you that, you will just have to listen. If you like warm, sweet stories with a great ending, this is for you! A delightful tale full of whimsy and fun. - Summary by phil chenevert

As Russia goes to war against Japan, Tolstoy urges those at all levels of society, from the Tsar down to the common soldier, to consider their actions in the light of Christ's teaching. "However strange this may appear, the most effective and certain deliverance of men from all the calamities which they inflict upon themselves and from the most dreadful of all—war—is attainable, not by any external general measures, but merely by that simple appeal to the consciousness of each separate man which, nineteen hundred years ago, was proposed by Jesus—that every man bethink himself, and ask himself, who is he, why he lives, and what he should and should not do...

The Notebooks of Leonardo Da VinciPREFACEA singular fatality has ruled the destiny of nearly all the most famous of Leonardo da Vinci's works. Two of the three most important were never completed, obstacles having arisen during his life-time, which obliged him to leave them unfinished; namely the Sforza Monument and the Wall-painting of the Battle of Anghiari, while the third--the picture of the Last Supper at Milan--has suffered irremediable injury from decay and the repeated restorations to which it was recklessly subjected during the XVIIth and XVIIIth centuries...

This novel is narrated in the first person and revolves around a character named Lil and the dynamics of a colorful cast of family members. She loves nature and, especially, birds, and thus the title. The story is set in Tennessee. The writing is very much a product of its place and time. Hammond was quite socially progressive but some of the language she puts into the mouths of characters and the depiction of African Americans may be upsetting to some readers.

Louisa Lilias Plunket Greene was an Irish author of children's books. However, like any good book for children, this book is also for adults. Everybody knows Violet, the girl who always sits in the window and looks at any passerby, the girl who is just looking, and never playing outside. The children tell her she is a hunchback. The adults consider them cruel. This book is exactly about that conflict. How much to tell? How much to shelter a girl from a world she might never be able to join? Can Violet be happy with her lot, even in the face of trouble? This is a very touching book for those who want to learn about children, the adults who love them, and what it truly means to be different...

Louisa May Alcott, more famously known for her Little Women series, takes a familiar nursery rhyme and creates a whole novel out of it in one of her last books Jack and Jill: A Village Story. Though she continued to publish under the penname AM Barnard, this book probably marked the end of a particular writing phase in 1880. Jack and Jill is set in the fictional Harmony Village. On a December afternoon, the youngsters of the village are out enjoying the bracing cold and snow. The bright winter shines down as they have fun skating and sledding...

Polly Milton, a 14-year-old country girl, visits her friend Fanny Shaw and her wealthy family in the city for the first time. Poor Polly is overwhelmed by the splendor at the Shaws’ and their urbanized, fashionable lifestyles, fancy clothes and some other habits she considers weird and, mostly, unlikable. However, Polly’s warmth, support and kindness eventually win her the hearts of all the family members. Six years later, Polly comes back to the city to become a music teacher.

Jo’s Boys is the third book in the Little Women trilogy by Louisa May Alcott, published in 1886. In it, Jo’s “children”, now grown, are caught up in real world troubles. All three books – although fiction – are highly autobiographical and describe characters that were really in Alcott’s life. This book contains romance as the childhood playmates become flirtatious young men and women. The characters are growing up, going out into the world and deciding their futures.

Alcott in 1862 served as a nurse in Georgetown, D.C during the Civil War. She wrote home what she observed there. Those harrowing and sometimes humorous letters compiled make up Hospital Sketches.

An eye-witness account of the fall of Antwerp to the Germans in the opening months of World War I, Mack’s story has passages of extraordinary vividness and immediacy. Flawed by the most treacly sentiment in some places and the most ferocious anti-German invective in others, her account endures as an uncommonly forthright, passionate testimony to those tragic events and the ordinary people who were the true heroes of them. As a forty-something, coquettish war correspondent wrapped in sable furs...

Memoirs of Queen Elizabeth from a variety of sources within the monarch's court, compiled and interpreted by Lucy Aikin.

Lucy Larcom was an American poet, teacher, and mil-worker. According to Wikipedia: "Larcom served as a model for the change in women's roles in society." This is her colorful autobiography. Here, she tells about her happy childhood, and her time working in the mill. Along the way, she speaks about topics like morality, independence, love and loss inside a family, a strong belief in god, and the effects of being poor. Fans of Gene Stratton Porter, Fanny Fern and Susan Warner, and Ella Wheeler Wilcox will be delighted with this book. Lucy's sunny personality makes this book a very uplifting and interesting read.

A selection of Beethoven’s letters from the compilation by Dr. Ludwig Nohl and translated by Lady Grace Wallace.

"Famous Affinities of History" is a book of passion-filled accounts of the most famous love affairs of history. The stories of Cleopatra, Victor Hugo, Honore de Balzac, Jonathan Swift, Charles Dickens, Karl Marx, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Byron, George Sand and other famous people of all times (even those of royal blood are not spared), are dealt with in Lyndon Orr's own interesting and suspenseful style. Written in four volumes, this book makes for an informative, interesting and thoroughly enjoyable read, giving us an insight into the lives and lifestyles of various popular figures of history.

FOR more than six hundred years that is, since Magna Carta, in 1215 there has been no clearer principle of English or American constitutional law, than that, in criminal cases, it is not only the right and duty of juries to judge what are the facts, what is the law, and what was the moral intent of the accused; but that it is also their right, and their primary and paramount duty, to judge of the justice of the law, and to hold all laws invalid, that are, in their opinion, unjust or oppressive, and all persons guiltless in violating, or resisting the execution of, such laws...

The following work offers in book form the series of studies on the question of the historicity of Jesus, presented from time to time before the Independent Religious Society in Orchestra Hall, Chicago, 1909. No effort has been made to change the manner of the spoken, into the more regular form of the written, word.

A light journey through the history of chemistry, from its start in the obscure mysteries of alchemy to what was, for the author, the cutting edge of the development of modern atomic theory … and whose developing blind ends we can now see with the advantage of hind sight.

Philomene Isolde is a good little girl, but has been very lonely since the death of her mother. Playing make-believe in the garden, Philomene is surprised when she meets a little man in a green suit who invites her to Fairyland.

“If, in these pages, written in remembrance of my father, I should tell you, my dear friends, nothing new of him, I can, at least, promise you that what I shall tell will be told faithfully, if simply, and perhaps there may be some things not familiar to you.” So begins chapter one of My Father as I Recall Him, the personal recollections of Mary Dickens, (Mamie, as she was called), the oldest daughter of the great novelist, Charles Dickens.

I have merely tried to make a written record of some of the hours I have lived through during the course of this war. A modest Lieutenant of Chasseurs, I cannot claim to form any opinion as to the operations which have been carried out for the last nine months on an immense front. I only speak of things I have seen with my own eyes, in the little corner of the battlefield occupied by my regiment.

A philippic is a fiery, damning speech delivered to condemn a particular political actor. The term originates with Demosthenes, who delivered an attack on Philip II of Macedon in the 4th century BCE.Cicero consciously modeled his own attacks on Mark Antony, in 44 BC and 43 BC, on Demosthenes’s speeches, and if the correspondence between M. Brutus and Cicero are genuine [ad Brut. ii 3.4, ii 4.2], at least the fifth and seventh speeches were referred to as the Philippics in Cicero’s time. They were also called the Antonian Orations by Aulus Gellius...

Margaret Fuller (1810-1850) was an American feminist, writer, and intellectual associated with the Transcendentalist movement. Her book Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845) is considered the first major feminist work in the United States. Her life was short but full. She became the first editor of the transcendentalist journal The Dial in 1840, before joining the staff of the New York Tribune under Horace Greeley in 1844. By the time she was in her 30s, Fuller had earned a reputation as the best-read person in New England, male or female, and became the first woman allowed to use the library at Harvard College...

Margaret Sanger was an American sex educator and nurse who became one of the leading birth control activists of her time, having at one point, even served jail time for importing birth control pills, then illegal, into the United States. Woman and the New Race is her treatise on how the control of population size would not only free women from the bondage of forced motherhood, but would elevate all of society. The original fight for birth control was closely tied to the labor movement as well as the Eugenics movement, and her book provides fascinating insight to a mostly-forgotten turbulent battle recently fought in American history.

Margaret Sanger, an advocate for birth control rights, chronicles the story of her struggles, including her times in jail and in exile, in order to legalize birth control options for women. She details the uphill battles of not only convincing lawmakers, but of doctors as well. Her relentless pursuit is told against the backdrop of courtrooms, her personal life, and her travels across the globe, giving a glimpse into the world during and post-WW I. This riveting account is a must read for those interested in a key moment in woman’s history and reform.

Polly Pepper loves to tell stories, but there just isn't enough room in the other books to include her stories! So, since "the author has received from mothers and other persons interested in the Pepper Family, so many requests for the Stories told by Polly Pepper ... this initial volume of Polly’s earlier stories has been prepared in obedience to these requests" . So curl up at Polly's feet, in front of the warm fire, and enjoy the Stories Polly Pepper Told to the Five Little Peppers in the Little Brown House! - Summary by Rachel

Through delightful outings with her students, a teacher introduces her class to the fascinating world of insects. She encourages her students to observe and ask questions. This is a wonderful science text for young children.

A young New-Yorker of twelve heard an appeal for the Fatherless Children of France and his heart was touched. He had no money, but he resolved to give his spare time and his utmost energy to support a "kid in France." The French child needed ten cents worth of extra food each day, in order to grow up with strength and courage. The little American godfather earned those ten cents; he sold newspapers at the subway entrance, after school hours, and undertook an amazing variety of more or less lucrative odd jobs...

VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE FOR GIRLSBy MARGUERITE STOCKMAN DICKSONA FOREWORDFortunate are we to have from the pen of Mrs. Dickson a book on the vocational guidance of girls. Mrs. Dickson has the all-round life experiences which give her the kind of training needed for a broad and sympathetic approach to the delicate, intricate, and complex problems of woman's life in the swiftly changing social and industrial world. Mrs. Dickson was a teacher for seven years in the grades in the city of New York. She then became the partner of a superintendent of schools in the business of making a home...

One of the beneficial results of the Great War has been the teaching of thrift to the American housewife. For patriotic reasons and for reasons of economy, more attention has been bestowed upon the preparing and cooking of food that is to be at once palatable, nourishing and economical.In the Italian cuisine we find in the highest degree these three qualities. That it is palatable, all those who have partaken of food in an Italian trattoria or at the home of an Italian family can testify, that it is healthy the splendid manhood and womanhood of Italy is a proof more than sufficient...

This is the authoritative book written by Montessori to describe her methods. It gives an overview of the Montessori Method as developed for 3 to 6 year olds. It is a short work, intended as a manual for teachers and parents, detailing the materials used as well as her philosophy in developing them. "As a result of the widespread interest that has been taken in my method of child education, certain books have been issued, which may appear to the general reader to be authoritative expositions of the Montessori system...

A selection of chocolate recipes which were produced for Walter Baker & Co, the oldest producer of chocolate in the United States. Advertisements used by Walter Baker & Co can be found in Section 7. They are read by: Cori Samuel, Peter Why, David Lawrence, BookAngel7, ashleighjane and Joanne Rochon.

The Grey House is grey in color and is home to the Grey family. In this, the first of the Grey House books, we are introduced to the three Grey sisters, Oswyth, 17, Roberta, 16 and 14 year old Prudence, their sensible and down-to-earth mother and dreamer of a father, an inventor with his head in the clouds. As we grow to know and love the family, their neighbors and relatives, a menacing cloud appears and the girls must rally to save the father they love from his own obstinacy and their home from disaster. Will it all end in tragedy or will they save the day? - Summary by Lynne Thompson

At breakfast, Mr. Graham drops the bombshell that his niece -- Joan, Jane or Janet, he's not sure which, will be arriving from the west to live with his large family. The news is met with mixed emotions - horror from his wife, resentment from the eldest two daughters and amusement from the eldest son. What will this stranger be like? How will she fit in with her cousins? - Summary by Lynne Thompson