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How can you tell when your pig is fat enough? Why should you never buy mustard? What's wrong with eating potatoes? Which is better, beer or tea? And what type of straw makes the best bonnets? William Cobbett is the man to ask. Here is his book of practical advice to the rural labouring 'cottager' (first published as a part-work in 1821-22), the precursor in many ways to the handbooks on self-sufficiency that today entice so many city-dwellers. A champion of the rural working class at a time of huge social and industrial change, a radical politician and a prolific writer, Cobbett is opinionated, passionate and enlightening, making 'Cottage Economy' a fascinating and entertaining window on daily life for the smallholders of his day, and still inspirational, almost 200 years later, to those who seek 'a good living' as the foundation of happiness. (Introduction by Philippa) The figures referred to in the section on ice houses can be viewed http://www.gutenberg.org/files/32863/32863-h/images/i_147.jpg here...

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Cookery, Advice, Instruction

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The Cherry Orchard is Russian playwright Anton Chekhov's last play. It premiered at the Moscow Art Theatre 17 January 1904 in a production directed by Constantin Stanislavski. Chekhov intended this play as a comedy and it does contain some elements of farce; however, Stanislavski insisted on directing the play as a tragedy. Since this initial production, directors have had to contend with the dual nature of this play. The play concerns an aristocratic Russian woman and her family as they return to the family's estate (which includes a large and well-known cherry orchard) just before it is auctioned to pay the mortgage. The story presents themes of cultural futility — both the futility of the aristocracy to maintain its status and the futility of the bourgeoisie to find meaning in its newfound materialism. In reflecting the socio-economic forces at work in Russia at the turn of the 20th century, including the rise of the middle class after the abolition of serfdom in the mid-19th century and the sinking of the aristocracy, the play reflects forces at work around the globe in that period. (Summary from Wikipedia, edited by Elizabeth K...

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Play

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The Proposal is a one act comic farce by Anton Chekhov. In Chekhov's Russia, marriage was a means of economic stability for most people. They married to gain wealth and possessions. In this play, the concept of marriage is being satirized to show the real purpose of marriage - materialistic gain rather than true love. (Summary with reference to Wikipedia)...

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Play, Satire, Comedy

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The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade was the last major novel by Herman Melville, the American writer and author of Moby-Dick. Published on April 1, 1857 (presumably the exact day of the novel's setting), The Confidence-Man was Melville's tenth major work in eleven years. The novel portrays a Canterbury Tales-style group of steamboat passengers whose interlocking stories are told as they travel down the Mississippi River toward New Orleans. The novel is written as cultural satire, allegory, and metaphysical treatise, dealing with themes of sincerity, identity, morality, religiosity, economic materialism, irony, and cynicism. Many critics have placed The Confidence-Man alongside Melville's Moby-Dick and Bartleby the Scrivener as a precursor to 20th-century literary preoccupations with nihilism, existentialism, and absurdism....

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Fiction

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Ambrose Bierce (1842 - 1914?), satirist, critic, poet, short story writer and journalist. His fiction showed a clean economical style often sprinkled with subtle cynical comments on human behaviour. In the Devil's Dictionary, he let his sense of humour and his cynical outlook on life colour a collection of dictionary-like definitions. (Summary by Peter)...

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Satire

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This is a small collection of whimsical poems by the American physician and author Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. The Deacon's Masterpiece describes the logical outcome of building an object (in this case, a two-wheeled carriage called a shay) that has no weak points. The economic term one hoss shay, referring to a certain model of depreciation, derives its name from this poem. How the Old Horse Won the Bet is a lighthearted look at a horse race. Finally, The Broomstick Train is a wonderfully Halloween-y explanation of how an electric tram really works. (Summary by Laurie Anne Walden)...

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Poetry, Humor

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Vera (1921) by Elizabeth von Arnim is a black comedy based on her disastrous second marriage to Earl Russell: a mordant analysis of the romantic delusions through which wives acquiesce in husbands' tyrannies. In outline the story of this utterly unromantic novel anticipates DuMaurier's Rebecca. Naive Lucy Entwhistle is swept into marriage by widower, Everard Wemyss. His mansion The Willows is pervaded by the spectre of his dead wife Vera, with whom Lucy becomes obsessed. ... Here the servants are partisan for both wives, and lose no opportunity to disrupt Everard's unctuous, oppressive household routines. An extraordinarily black vision of marriage, also continuously funny, the novel's power lies in the wit and economy of the usually prolix Von Arnim....

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Fiction

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Eugene Oneguine is a classic of Russian literature, and its eponymous protagonist has served as the model for a number of Russian literary heroes (so-called superfluous men). It was published in serial form between 1825 and 1832. The first complete edition was published in 1833, and the currently accepted version is based on the 1837 publication. Almost the entire work is made up of 389 stanzas of iambic tetrameter with the unusual rhyme scheme AbAbCCddEffEgg, where the uppercase letters represent feminine rhymes while the lowercase letters represent masculine rhymes. This form has come to be known as the Onegin stanza or the Pushkin sonnet. The rhythm, innovative rhyme scheme, the natural tone and diction, and the economical transparency of presentation all demonstrate the virtuosity which has been instrumental in proclaiming Pushkin as the undisputed master of Russian poetry. The story is told by a narrator (a lightly fictionalized version of Pushkin's public image), whose tone is educated, worldly, and intimate. The narrator digresses at times, usually to expand on aspects of this social and intellectual world. This allows for a ...

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Poetry, Fiction, Literature, Romance

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Excerpt: WHEN I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only. I lived there two years and two months. At present I am a sojourner in civilized life again. I should not obtrude my affairs so much on the notice of my readers if very particular inquiries had not been made by my townsmen concerning my mode of life, which some would call impertinent, though they do not appear to me at all impertinent, but, considering the circumstances, very natural and pertinent. Some have asked what I got to eat; if I did not feel lonesome; if I was not afraid; and the like. Others have been curious to learn what portion of my income I devoted to charitable purposes; and some, who have large families, how many poor children I maintained. I will therefore ask those of my readers who feel no particular interest in me to pardon me if I undertake to answer some of these questions in this book. In most books, the I, or first person, is omitted; in this...

Table of Contents Details
Table of Contents: Economy, 1 -- Where I Lived, and What I Lived For, 50 -- Reading, 62 -- Sounds, 69 -- Solitude, 80 -- Visitors, 87 -- The Bean-Field, 97 -- The Village, 105 -- The Ponds, 109 -- Baker Farm, 126 -- Higher Laws, 132 -- Brute Neighbors, 140 -- House-Warming, 149 -- Former Inhabitants; and Winter Visitors, 160 -- Winter Animals, 169 -- The Pond in Winter, 176 -- Spring, 186 -- Conclusion, 199...

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I doubt that anyone who reads [Born Again] will ever forget it: it is quite singularly bad, with long undigestible rants against the evils of the world, an impossibly idealistic Utopian prescription for the said evils, and - as you will have gathered - a very silly plot. - oddbooks.co.uk Alfred Lawson was a veritable Renaissance man: a professional baseball player, a luminary in the field of aviation, an outspoken advocate of vegetarianism and economic reform, and the founder of a pseudo-scientific crackpot philosophy called Lawsonomy. Born Again, his only novel, is a bizarre, delirious, and delightfully silly utopian science-fiction novel that lays the groundwork for the philosophy that would later dominate Lawson's life. It tells the story of John Convert, a wayward, seafaring soul (based loosely on Lawson, minus the conveniently symbolic initials) who is tossed overboard by his crewmen after a physical altercation. Convert awakens on an island inhabited by a race of superhuman giants -- called the Sagemen -- who slumber in their subterranean city. He then meets Arletta, a giantess who takes Convert on a journey that will change h...

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Fiction, Science fiction, Adventure, Philosophy

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Ambrose Bierce (1842 - 1914?), satirist, critic, poet, short story writer and journalist. His fiction showed a clean economical style often sprinkled with subtle cynical comments on human behaviour. Nothing is known of his death, as he went missing while an observer with Pancho Villa’s army in 1913/14. (Summaries by Peter Yearsley) The Ways of Ghosts : Stories of encounters with the ghosts of the dead and dying. The spirits of the dead reach out to the living, to pass on a message or to pursue a killer. Contents (with beginning time):

• Present at a Hanging (02:06)
• A Cold Greeting (07:07)
• A Wireless Message (11:15)
• An Arrest (17:04)

Soldier Folk : Oddities of death and life; from a man who finds that his death is uncertain, through the effects of war on the family, duty that survives death, to the memory of revenge. Contents (with beginning time):

• A Man with Two Lives (00:31)
• Three and One are One (06:23)
• A Baffled Ambuscade (14:18)
• Two Military Executions (19:45)

Some Haunted Houses - Part One : Encounters of the living with the spirit...

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Horror/Ghost stories

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Ambrose Bierce (1842 - 1914?), best known as journalist, satirist and short story writer. Cynical in outlook, economical in style; Bierce vanished while an observer with Pancho Villa's army. Four grotesque short stories about murder within the family, seen through the gently innocent eyes of family members ... usually the murderer himself. (Summary written by Peter Yearsley)...

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Horror/Ghost stories

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Laws (Greek: Νόμοι) is Plato's last and longest dialogue. It is generally agreed that Plato wrote this dialogue as an older man, having failed in his effort in Syracuse on the island of Sicily to guide a tyrant's rule, instead having been thrown in prison....

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Classics (antiquity), Ancient Texts, Economics/Political Economy, History, Philosophy, Politics

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Originally published by the Norwegian-American economist Thorstein Veblen while he was a professor at the University of Chicago in 1898, the Theory of the Leisure Class is considered one of the great works of economics as well as the first detailed critique of consumerism. In the book, Veblen argues that economic life is driven not by notions of utility, but by social vestiges from pre-historic times. [Summary modified from Wikipedia.]...

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An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations is the magnum opus of the Scottish economist Adam Smith, published on March 9, 1776 during the Scottish Enlightenment. It is a clearly written account of political economy at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, and is widely considered to be the first modern work in the field of economics. (Summary from Wikipedia)...

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Economics/Political Economy

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Principles of Economics is a leading economics textbook by Alfred Marshall (1842-1924), first published in 1890. Marshall began writing the Principles of Economics in 1881 and he spent much of the next decade at work on the treatise. His plan for the work gradually extended to a two-volume compilation on the whole of economic thought; the first volume was published in 1890 to worldwide acclaim that established him as one of the leading economists of his time. It brought the ideas of supply and demand, of marginal utility and of the costs of production into a coherent whole, and became the dominant economic textbook in England for a long period.(Wikipedia)...

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Economics/Political Economy

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The Quest of the Silver Fleece is a story of romance, race economics and politics set around the 1900s. Here, a traditionally educated boy and an unschooled “swamp girl” each begin a journey toward love, ambition and redemption in the “Old South.” (Summary by AJai Hilton)...

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Fiction

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The book chronicles and vilifies its targets in three parts: National Delusions, Peculiar Follies, and Philosophical Delusions. The subjects of Mackay's debunking include alchemy, beards (influence of politics and religion on), witch-hunts, crusades and duels. Present day writers on economics, such as Andrew Tobias, laud the three chapters on economic bubbles. (summary from wikipedia)...

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History, Essay/Short nonfiction

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One of the first novel-length pieces of nautical fiction, MR. MIDSHIPMAN EASY (1836) is a funny and easygoing account of the adventures of Jack Easy, a son of privilege who joins the Royal Navy. The work begins as a satire on Jack’s attachment to “the rights of man” that may try the listener’s patience. But despair not, for the story soon settles down as the philosophical midshipman begins his many triumphs over bullies, foul weather, and various damned foreigners of murderous intent. Caveat audiens: This novel employs racial/ethnic epithets and religious stereotypes, as well as taking a rather sunny view of supply-side economics. In short, there's something here to offend almost everyone. Frederick Marryat (1792-1848) entered the Royal Navy as a 14-year-old midshipman. He resigned his commission at the rank of captain after 24 years of service to devote his time to writing. (Summary by Adrian Praetzellis)...

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Historical Fiction, Sea stories

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H. G. Wells's proposal for social reform was the formation of a world state, a concept that would increasingly preoccupy him throughout the remainder of his life. One of his most ambitious early attempts at portraying a world state was A Modern Utopia (1905). A Modern Utopia was intended as a hybrid between fiction and 'philosophical discussion'. Like most utopists, he has indicated a series of modifications which in his opinion would increase the aggregate of human happiness. Basically, Wells' idea of a perfect world would be if everyone were able to live a happy life. This book is written with an intimate knowledge of former ideal commonwealths and is a conscious attempt to describe a utopia that is not utopian....

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Politics, Economics/Political Economy, Fiction