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Fifteen short nonfiction works in the public domain independently chosen by the readers. Volume 60 features excerpts from two German philosophers, Christian von Wolff and Hegel, as well as British theologian Edward Stillingfleet. It contains essays on women as inventors (Matilda Joslyn Gage) , Uruguayan society (W. H. Hudson), political economy (Frederick Bastiat) pipe smoking (Sewell Ford) and personal dislikes (Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.). Days to remember are chronicled in first hand accounts of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake (James Stetson), and a 1830's hydrogen balloon ascension over ...

"Editors of some of the most sensational newspapers say they make a newspaper to suit the public... it must startle with incident and surprise, found or invented." Charles Dudley Warner's lament, from Literature and the Stage, written in 1889, is testimony to the constancy of human preoccupations. War, religious persecution, foreign travel and exploration, dreams and nightmares, even chicken eggs and mice are among the 15 reader chosen topics in volume 107. The volume also contains a timely injunction to Do It Now and a formula to find the day of the week for any given date. Summary by Sue ...

“Oh, mother, I would like to know everything.” “You can never know everything, my child, but you can learn many things from books.” According to children's book author James Baldwin (1841-1925), book reading was the key to success in life (Read and You Shall Know). Several vol. 083 selections tackle the thorny questions of how to foster open-mindedness, creativity, and compassion in the child and adult: (The Road to Success; Young People and Insurance; William Paley on Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy; Letter from Françoise d'Aubigné; Looking Ahead for Democracy (1919): ...

"Certitude is not the test of certainty." This pithy phrase is from Jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr's essay on Natural Law, one of twenty nonfiction pieces chosen by their readers for inclusion in volume 087. Selections from Pascal, Josiah Royce, and C.S. Peirce also delve philosophical themes. Builders, warriors, artists, and activists, the many faces of mankind, are illuminated in selections on Ferdinand De Lesseps, Stanislaus Koniecpolski, Jan Karol Chodkiewicz, Mark Twain, Charlie Chaplin, Frederic Edwin Church, the 14th century citizens of Liège, who vanquished Sir Radus' castle, and ...

Twenty short nonfiction works chosen by the readers. A review of William Carlos Williams' "Kora in Hell" by Robert McAlmon is one of several selections devoted to literature and learning. Others are H. P. Lovecraft's "Literary Composition;" George Herbert Betts's "The Mind and Its Education;" William Wells Newell's "Michelangelo as Poet;" and Thoreau's "Wild Apples." Humor receives its due in "The Methods of Mr. Sellyer: A Book Store Study" (Stephen Leacock); "The Plumber" (Charles Dudley Warner); "The Yawn of the Computer Age" (NSA Cryptolog); and an unnamed boy's "Essay on Girls." Innovation...

Seventeen short nonfiction works in the public domain, independently chosen by the readers. Topics include science and natural history--the donkey, forestry, grape vines, astronomy, historian Agnes Mary Clerke, and Greek botanist Theophrastus ; philosophy-- Nicholas of Cusa and Emmanuel Kant; Sommerset Maugham's reminiscences of Spain; Joseph Conrad's sea stories; an encounter with a long-ago companion who has contracted leprosy (Joe of Lahaina); working in the dead-letter office; a dinner the painter Benjamin Hayden hosted for Wordsworth, Keats, and Charles Lamb; a portrait of Margaret Fuller...

Eighteen short nonfiction works in the public domain, independently chosen by the readers. Topics include ancient Greek thinkers--Parmenides, Demosthenes, Euclid; William Lloyd Garrison and the National Anti-Slavery Convention; 19th and 20th century philosophers, sociologists, theologians and essayists--Bertrand Russell, Walter Rauschenbusch, Kierkegaard, N.F.S. Brundtvig, Frederik Sibbern, Hans Lassen Martensen, Oscar Wilde; science and invention--sunspots, paper making, aviation; and the shipwreck adventures of Alexander Selkirk, the real Robinson Crusoe. (summary by Sue Anderson) Learning ...

"Of all effects of weather, snow makes the greatest change in animal economy in the countryside, and weeks often pass before the old order is restored." [English Animals in Snow.] Many of the reader-chosen selections in vol. 101 look at disruptions in the status quo. Weather features in A Drop of 4000 feet; Geographic Aspect of Culture; and Effects of Weather Upon Death Rate and Crime in India. The impact of disease is made clear in The History of Syphilis. The disruptive power of technology is shown in Thomas Edison, Greatest of Inventors. Societal and religious strife are examined in ...

"A regard for decency, even at the cost of success, is but the regard for one's own dignity" was novelist Joseph Conrad's take on fame, a quote from the preface to his autobiography A Personal Record (1912). Other lives chosen by readers to examine in vol. 085 include the Borgias; the Cynocephali; Hermann von Helmholtz; Edgar Allan Poe; John Burroughs; a pre-Revolutionary War magnate named Browne, who built a mansion on the ridge of a hill; women as a social class; and an 1821 rabies victim named Thomas, who exhibited hydrophobia. Political history receives scrutiny in Some Materials and a ...

"Fine experience lies at one's own doorstep" writes Raymond S. Spears, suggesting that boating on the Mississippi River offers "taunts to daring spirits." Exploration of the natural world and the human psyche figure in many of the reader-chosen selections in vol. 094: Wasps, Seedling Fruits, The Sun's Motion, The Atomic Bomb, The Altruist in Politics, The Sexual Life of Our Time, Concerning Witchcraft, and The Making of an Aviator. Place and persons receive attention in General Hazard Stevens, James Fenimore Cooper, Will Rogers, Majorian, Racimer, Workaday London, and Palace of the Alhambra. ...

Fifteen short nonfiction works in the public domain, independently chosen by the readers. Topics include philosophy and thought--Phtah-Hotep, Petrarch, Diderot, Bertrand Russell, and the Weymouth New Testament; adventure and travel--a survival story by Mark Twain and a woman's sojourn in Saltillo, Mexico; immigration and war--Benjamin Franklin on the assimilation of German speakers, Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, the League of Nations, and an essay on potatoes and war; geology--on the origins of chalk; a critique of one-act plays, a biography of H.H. Munro (Saki), and Emerson's advice to ...

"It is difficult for the human mind to take a comprehensive view of a subject." This is how librarian Arthur Bostwick begins his essay Three Kinds of Librarians. Many volume 102 readers chose faceted inquiry into the human experience: the Balfour Declaration; Ethics and the Weather; Typhoid Fever in Melbourne; High-Grade Men; Attractive Labor; Forced Sterilization; If Your Baby Must Travel in Wartime; Shall We Scrap the Calendar?; Impossibility of Witchcraft; Phenomena Called Spiritual; the Mutability of Literature; and Dining Out. Also included in the volume are biographies of two Polish ...

Twenty short nonfiction works, individually chosen by the readers. "The ground rose and fell in successive furrows, like the ruffled waters of a lake, and I became bewildered in my ideas..." John James Audubon's vivid recollection of the 1812 New Madrid earthquake is one of several Vol. 072 selections with a scientific focus. Others include Luminous Plants; The Sunbeam and the Spectrascope; and biographies of two shipbuilders: Robert Fulton and Thomas Andrews. The emotive and rational sides of human nature are evinced in essays (The Game of Scandal; Bashful; Child Psychology and Nonsense); ...

Twenty short nonfiction works chosen by the readers. Is the sound of a dripping faucet music? According to Aldous Huxley, "The music of the drops is the symbol and type of the whole universe... asymptotic to sense, infinitely close to significance, but never touching it." (Water Music). Sensory and psychological exploration define several recordings in Vol. 075 (On the Pleasures of Friendship; Prohibition; The Danger of Lying in Bed; The Effects of Opium in Lowness of Spirits; How to Listen to Music; The Story of the Alphabet; Letter from William Blake; and Poets). Narrative history and ...

Twenty short nonfiction works in the public domain, independently chosen by the readers. Topics include History--Jocelyn de Brakelond's 13th century chronicle of the Bury St. Edmund monastery, Lorenzo de Medici's Florence, the voyage of the Mayflower, and Mark Twain's essay Stirring Times in Austria; Philosophy--Kierkegaard and Leibniz; Speeches, Sermons, and Diary Entries from Abraham Lincoln, Robert Ingersoll, and Queen Victoria; Literature--a tribute to George Meredith and a critique of Mencken's The American Language; and Nature and the Natural World--George Mallory outlining the route to ...

Fifteen short nonfiction works in the public domain, independently chosen by the readers. Topics include the history of aeroplanes, political speeches, travel, philosophy, Japan, the United Nations, Congressional law, rules of cricket and more. (Summary by Sue Anderson)Note: "On the Part Played by Accident in Discovery" by Ernst Mach was translated by Thomas J. McCormack.

Sixteen short nonfiction works in the public domain, independently chosen by the readers. The human condition is variously explored in Chesterton's essay "The Contented Man," Shōtoku Taishi's "Laws" outlining the proper relationships between rulers and governed in 7th century Japan, the Egyptian "Story of Sinuhe" composed circa 1800 B.C. with its theme of divine providence and mercy, "The Four Minute Men of Chicago" invoking patriotism during World War I, and in Arthur Moss' secularist essay "Natural Man." Contributing to this exploration are selections from Locke's "Essay Concerning Humane ...

Sixteen short nonfiction works in the public domain, independently chosen by the readers. Topics include science and natural history--carnivorous plants, tadpoles, tent caterpillars, flights of birds, horse training, dogs, children's sign language, trees in winter, and night noises in the woods; philosophy--Roger Bacon and Nicholas of Cusa; satire and literary criticism--the movies as "stupies," bustles, and facetious plots for short stories by Dorothy Parker; also an appraisal of Conrad Aiken's poetry, and an intimate look at Abraham Lincoln's early life in Illinois. (Summary by Sue Anderson)

Twenty short nonfiction works chosen by the readers. Eucken's "The Failure of Speculative Philosophy," is one of several essays devoted to timeless questions. Others are by James Howell on man, nature and the universe, Samuel Johnson on procrastination and the flight of time, Schleiemacher on the social element in religion, Ambrose Bierce on immortality, and Thomas Paine and Jonathan Swift with their famous essays, "The Age of Reason" (1794-1795) and "A Modest Proposal" (1729). Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Pearl Harbor "Day of Infamy" speech is one of various commentaries on war, politics and ...

Seventeen short nonfiction works in the public domain, independently chosen by the readers. Topics include philosophy--Bertrand Russell, Spinoza, and Epictetus; science and invention--the Wright brothers, Leibniz, arctic explorer Sir John Franklin, spider webs, and cylindrical silos; plays and cinema--Lillian Gish and Friedrich Schiller; satire--selections from Ambrose Bierce, Robert Benchley, and Seneca; biographies--Aaron Burr, and Sophia Packard of Spellman College; the murder of Archbishop Charles Seghers in Alaska in 1886; and a history of Torre Abbey in England. Summary by Sue Anderson ...