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Seventeen short nonfiction works in the public domain independently chosen by the readers. Volume 61 features articles and essays on both current and timeless topics, ranging from whether marijuana is addictive (U.S. Gov.) to what constitutes foolish behavior (Erasmus, Gelett Burgess). Sermons in Stone, an essay by Oscar Wilde on classic sculptures displayed at the British Museum, is complemented by an actual sermon (The Carnal Mind, Enmity Against God by Spurgeon), while Frederick William Shelton muses on the fleeting beauty of a ripe peach (Incidents in a Retired Life). Truth and lies, luck,...

"Grandmother and Stockhausen are of the opinion that Wagner will one day totally disappear. His music, they argue, is too unhealthy." Clara Schumann's grandson's diary entries for 1894-1896 are a delight for music lovers. Other artistic and literary selections, chosen by vol. 104 readers, include Boadicea; Of the Green Children; A Search for Robinhood; What is a Child?; the Book Collector; Memoirs of Claude Seurat and of painter Georges Seurat; Schumann as Mirrored in His Letters; and Replies by Teachers to Questions Respecting Mental Fatigue. Historical perspectives on a variety of issues ...

"When money gives out, sense ensues." This pithy saying is from Yugoslav Proverbs, one of the twenty reader-chosen selections in volume 103. This collection ranges from the IRS budget, to the Fire Alarm Telegraph, to Curing Herring. Current events are discussed in Baltimore Bridge Collapse; ATT Network Outage of 2024; and Cuba: U.S. Policy Overview. Supreme Court judgments figure in Tomatoes, Fruit or Vegetable? Talent and training receive attention in Civil Service Tests of Policemen and Firemen; Measurement of Musical Talent; Unknowns in Mathematics; and Common Sense in Chess. Social action ...

"Instead of letting ourselves, at the thought of mealtime, fall into a state of chronic mental flutter that incapacitates us for any serious work, let us sit down in advance and calmly plan out the meals for a week" (Janet Hill, Meat Substitutes, 1910) Menus for meatless meals make meal planning easy, while two essays on chocolate will whet the appetite. Many reader-chosen selections in vol. 099 provide psychological insights into human motivation: Saved by a Nose; Mental Engineering; Training Human Capacities for the New Era; Easter Choir Strikes; From Alien to Citizen; Women as Munition ...

Volume 100 of the Short Nonfiction Collection celebrates 16 years (2007-2023) of volunteer readings which reflect the wide range of nonfiction writing. Volume 100 exemplifies this diversity with topics as far afield as declassified CIA documents and Bible verses (CIA Avian Training; Story of Creation; Mark Twain on Biblical Patriarchs; Hidden Years at Nazareth). Other selections highlight the natural world and scientific inquiry (White Hurricane; Ancient Meadows; Improving Natural Knowledge; Know the $100 Note); as well as the complexities of human morals, love, politics, and behavior (...

"There has always been a tendency on the part of men of brains to look with contempt on women's work in the arts." Screenwriter and novelist Anita Loos' acerbic opinion is part of "Women in Film Speak Their Minds (1925).” Ida Tarbell's "Women as Inventors" showcases female accomplishment. Vol. 081 contains commentary on a variety of human concerns: fame (The Approaching Epidemic); scandal (The Reynolds Pamphlet); religion (Infant Baptism; Christianity and Culture; John Huss; Hussites); education (Flourishing Mediocrity); entrepreneurship (The Telephone: Building the Business and Patent ...

Twenty short nonfiction works in the public domain, independently chosen by the readers. Volume 63 features essays on a variety of topics: the emotion of the multitude in drama (Yeats), audience (Encyclopedia Britannica), corpulence and diet (Banting), charity (Ambrose Bierce), the forgotten man (Sumner), murder (DeQuincey), suicide (Bierce), free masonry (Albert Pike), the poetic principle (Poe), and the evils of slavery (Othello). Excerpts from Kierkegaard explore his philosophy. Biographical sketches include Calamity Jane, Joseph Glidden, Lucy Bakewell Audubon, and J. M. W. Turner, while ...

As we approach Christmas 2024, we invite you to join us in some heart-warming tales and uplifting carols and poems. We wish you compliments of the season.

2019 collection of items with a Christmas theme containing traditional stories, Christmas traditions, Christmas cakes. We hope you will enjoy it.

A collection of pieces, both fiction and non-fiction, that have as its subject a word beginning with a specific letter of the English alphabet. Subjects can range from coffee to tea, animals to vampires, law to emotions.

"Is sin a necessary stage in the development of humanity, or a yawning chasm in the very structure of the universe?” Theologian J. Gresham Machen's exploration of "eternal ideas" is joined, in vol. 082, by readings in philosophy and psychology by Immanuel Kant, Henri Bergson, and Samuel Johnson. Insights from forestry, geography, astronomy, and zoology expand the view (Save the Redwoods; We Are Going to be Inspected; Along the Florida Coast; The Red Fox; and The World as Known to the Ancients). Human resiliency, inventiveness and heroism are exemplified in A Heroine of the Black Hole; The ...

This is a collection of 26 selections, both fiction and nonfiction, in which each topic begins with a different letter of the alphabet.

Fifteen short nonfiction works in the public domain, independently chosen by the readers. Topics include Philosophy and Psychology: selections from Kierkegaard's "Preparation for a Christian Life" and Jung's "The Hymn of Creation," and an exploration of Hegel's psychology; Arts and the Avant-garde: critiques of Kreymborg by Lola Ridge and of Pablo Picasso by Marius de Zayas, the rationale behind "1001 Afternoons in Chicago" by Ben Hecht, and notes on the 15th century inventors of moveable type; Science: "Voyager I Encounters Saturn" by NASA and microscopic investigation of protozoa; Equal ...

Twenty-one short nonfiction works chosen by the readers. "We must learn to dignify common labor." Booker T. Washington spoke plain truth at an 1898 Lincoln Day commemoration. Recorded during months of pandemic virus lockdown, unemployment, and mass dependence on the "common labor" of grocery clerks and delivery persons, Volume 074 of the Short Nonfiction Collection reflects its readers' reactions to uncertain times. Religion and Philosophy figure in several selections (The Second Epistle of Clement; Nietzsche on Nihilism and the Idea of Recurrence; The Counter-reformation in Scandinavia and ...

Twenty short nonfiction works chosen by the readers. "Suffrage for women will not usher in a millennium of peace and leisure" was the editorial opinion of the Boston Cooking School Magazine in May, 1914. [Woman's Problems]. Disillusionment with easy answers is the theme of several Vol. 071 readings [On Thinking for Oneself; Limitations of Truth-Telling; On Demagogues]. Rebellion and war, heroics and aftermath, are treated in Alexander at Gordium; Before Grant Won His Stars; Draft Riots in Wisconsin; The Truth About Greece; and Sophie Treadwell Interviews Pancho Villa. Humor provides relief in ...

In May 1919, three U.S. Navy sea-planes made the first successful trans-Atlantic crossing to Europe. Lieutenant Walter Hinton was a pilot. His first hand account of this historic flight is one of 20 reader chosen selections in volume 105. Other exciting recountings include: My Toughest Trip, America's Cup Triumph, The Last Camping Match, and Up a Shot Tower. Several scientific topics are included in vol. 105: Remarkable Weather of 1911, The Scientific Presentation of History, Design of Airports, How Many Feathers Has a Bird?, Fruit Growing in the Far North, Flowering and Fruiting as Controlled...

Twenty short nonfiction works chosen by the readers. President Theodore Roosevelt, in a 1903 speech, declared that "The future welfare of our nation depends upon the way in which we can combine...decency and strength," and opined that being "loose and foul of tongue" was incompatible with good citizenship. Personal and public morality, ethical and religious questions figure in several vol. 077 recordings: (Negro Slavery in Wisconsin, Russo-Japanese Agreement Concerning Korea, Government by the Brewers, My Cases of Old Sermons, The Dilemma of Determinism, How Religion May be an Embodiment of ...

Twenty short nonfiction works selected by the readers. “Shall we ever be able to visit the moon?” queries journalist Charles Nevers Holmes in 1920. Holmes was hopeful. Technology had come a long way since 1862, when balloonist James Glaisher made a daring ascent to 37,000 feet above the earth and passed out for lack of oxygen [Travels in the Air]. Glaisher had to best-guess the altitude to which his balloon had climbed while he was unconscious. Technology requires a rational system of accurate measurement [A Metric America]. Societies, however, are not rational. Some past eras were filled ...

Ghosts everywhere, and of any colour," was the promise of Spectropia, a book of "surprising spectral illusions" published in 1863. Optical illusions were among the twenty vol. 084 topics, chosen by their readers, which were concerned with science, technology, and medicine, including the societal implications of decision making in these fields: (The Equality of Inertial and Gravitational Mass; The Machine That Thinks; Rocks For Homes; Ottawa Illinois Radiation Area; Florence Nightingale to Her Nurses; Cincinnati's "Old Cunny; and Buck v. Bell). This Troubled World, a 1938 essay by Eleanor ...

Twenty short nonfiction works chosen by the readers. "Salve! ye dumb hearts. Let us be still and wait by the roadside." With these words, Kate Chopin decries the "crushing feet, the clashing discords, the ruthless hands and stifling breath” that power the “mad pace" of everyday life. Broadway: the Backbone of New York presents a more up-beat view of city life. Reflections on difficult times are the substance of several volume 073 readings (The Influenza Epidemic of 1918; Plague in Ireland in the Tudor Period; Soren Kierkegaard in his Life and Literature; and Remarks to Madame Curie); while...