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Phoebe Yates Pember served as a matron in the Confederate Chimborazo military hospital in Richmond, Virginia, during the Civil War, overseeing a dietary kitchen serving meals to 300 or more wounded soldiers daily. Reminiscences of a Southern Hospital is her vivid recounting of hospital life and of her tribulations (and personal growth) as a female administrator. To follow her from day one, when she is greeted with “ill-repressed disgust” that “one of them had come,” and she, herself, “could only understand that the position was one which dove-tailed the offices of housekeeper and cook” to the day when she as exerts control over the hospital’s “medicinal whiskey barrel” is to watch a woman find herself. Besides describing “daily scenes of pathos,” Pember gives a horrifying account of the prisoner exchange of November 1864 (“living and dead . . . not distinguishable”), and also of the evacuation and burning of Richmond in 1865. Her memoirs were serialized in Cosmopolite magazine in 1866, then reprinted in book form in 1879 under the title A Southern Woman’s Story. Pember was honored by the US Postal Service with a stamp in 1995. (Summ...

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Memoirs, History, War stories

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Charles King (1844 – 1933) was a United States soldier and a distinguished writer. He was the son of Civil War general Rufus King and great grandson of Rufus King, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. He graduated from West point in 1866 and served in the Army during the Indian Wars under George Crook. He was wounded in the arm forcing his retirement from the regular army. During this time he became acquainted with Buffalo Bill Cody. King would later write scripts for several of Cody's silent films. King's writings, relating to American Indians, cover a complex range of opinion within his novels. His sympathy for their cause of defending their homelands, and being forced to adopt a new lifestyle, did not stop him from graphically portraying them as savage and barbaric peoples. However, King also used his writings to harshly criticize U.S. government policies that resulted in Indian treaties not being honored and that permitted rampant corruption among government-appointed reservation agents. As a lieutenant in the 5th Cavalry, King was a participant on the American western frontier, who personally fought in battles...

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Fiction, Historical Fiction

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Early victories by the USSR in a global nuclear war cause the United Nations government to retreat to the moon leaving behind troops and fierce autonomous robots called “Claws”, which reproduce and redesign themselves in unmanned subterranean factories. After six bloody years of conflict the Soviets call for an urgent conference and UN Major Joseph Hendricks sets out to meet them. Along the way he will discover what the Claws have been up to, and it isn’t good… - Second Variety was first published in the May 1953 edition of Space Science Fiction Magazine. (Summary by Gregg Margarite)...

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Science fiction

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In this biography for young adults, Mary A. Hamilton gives a British person’s perspective on the 16th President of the United States. A glowing tribute to “Honest Abe”, the author traces Lincoln’s ancestral roots and recounts his birth in Kentucky, his youth in Indiana, his adult life in Illinois and his years in the White House. She also provides a good background on the causes and course of the American Civil War. Hamilton is not always historically precise. For example, she erroneously names Jefferson Davis as the Southern Democratic candidate for president running against Lincoln and Douglas in 1860 rather than John C. Breckinridge. However, overall “The Story of Abraham Lincoln” is a good summarization and interesting account of the life, values and politics of Lincoln. Cautions: Chapter 7 contains a single use of an epithet for African-Americans in a quotation from a British magazine. Chapter 8 ends with an example of a stereotypical Southern black dialect which many may find offensive. (Summary by John Lieder.)...

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History, Children, Biography

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The Charles Dickens 200th Anniversary Collection comprises short works previously unrecorded for - fiction, essays, poetry, letters, magazine articles and speeches - and each volume will be a pot pourri of all genres and periods of his writing. This first volume is released on Dickens' 200th birthday, February 7th 2012. Further volumes will follow during the anniversary year. Volume 1 includes short stories including, amongst others, The Holly Tree , the first part of Holiday Romance and three pieces from Mugby Junction . Some items requiring a little further explanation are Prince Bull , written as a fairy tale, but in reality a scathing attack on the Government's handling of supplies to the troops in the Crimean War; Old Lamps for New Ones in which Dickens makes clear his low opinion of the ethos of the Pre-Raphaelite school of painting; and Frauds on the Fairies , a polemic against George Cruikshank's bowdlerisation of fairy tales for moralistic purposes, and the interesting revelation that 'product placement' is by no means a new phenomenon. (Introduction by Ruth Golding)...

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Essay/Short nonfiction, Fiction, Poetry, Short stories, Art, Politics

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Excerpt: Reprinted from Fraser?s Magazine. The cloud which for the space of a month hung gloomily over the civilized world, black with far worse evils than those of simple war, has passed from over our heads without bursting. The fear has not been realized, that the only two first-rate Powers who are also free nations would take to tearing each other in pieces, both the one and the other in a bad and odious cause. For while, on the American side, the war would have been one of reckless persistency in wrong, on ours it would have been a war in alliance with, and, to practical purposes, in defence and propagation of, slavery. We had, indeed, been wronged....

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Charles Beard was the most influential American historian of the early 20th century. He published hundreds of monographs, textbooks and interpretive studies in both history and political science. He graduated from DePauw University in 1898, where he met and eventually married Mary Ritter Beard, one of the founders of the first greek-letter society for women, Kappa Alpha Theta. Many of his books were written in collaboration with his wife, whose own interests lay in feminism and the labor union movement.In 1921, Charles and Mary Beard published their textbook: History of the United States. A contemporaneous review stated: The authors… assume enough maturity in…students to justify a topical rather than a chronological treatment. They have dealt with movements, have sketched large backgrounds, have traced causes, and have discussed the interrelation of social and economic forces and politics. All this has been directed to the large purpose of helping the student to understand American today in all its national characteristics and as part of world civilization as well..The literary style is exceptionally clear and crisp, and the whole a...

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History

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Excerpt: Chapter 1. The Foreigner At Home. ?This is no my ain house; I ken by the biggin? o?t.? Two recent books* one by Mr. Grant White on England, one on France by the diabolically clever Mr. Hillebrand, may well have set people thinking on the divisions of races and nations. Such thoughts should arise with particular congruity and force to inhabitants of that United Kingdom, peopled from so many different stocks, babbling so many different dialects, and offering in its extent such singular contrasts, from the busiest over-population to the unkindliest desert, from the Black Country to the Moor of Rannoch. It is not only when we cross the seas that we go abroad; there are foreign parts of England; and the race that has conquered so wide an empire has not yet managed to assimilate the islands whence she sprang. Ireland, Wales, and the Scottish mountains still cling, in part, to their old Gaelic speech. It was but the other day that English triumphed in Cornwall, and they still show in Mousehole, on St. Michael?s Bay, the house of the last Cornish-speaking woman. English itself, which will now frank the traveller through the most of...

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Contents CHAPTER I: THE FOREIGNER AT HOME ..................................................................................... 5 CHAPTER II: SOME COLLEGE MEMORIES................................................................................ 14 CHAPTER III: OLD MORTALITY .................................................................................................. 20 CHAPTER IV: A COLLEGE MAGAZINE ...................................................................................... 28 CHAPTER V: AN OLD SCOTCH GARDENER ............................................................................. 36 CHAPTER VI: PASTORAL .............................................................................................................. 41 CHAPTER VII: THE MANSE .......................................................................................................... 48 CHAPTER VIII: MEMOIRS OF AN ISLET .................................................................................... 53 CHAPTER IX: THOMAS STEVENSON ? CIVIL ENGINEER...................................................... 58 CHAPTER X: TALK AND TALKERS ....................

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The Phoenician Women is a tragedy by Euripides. The title refers to the Greek chorus, which is composed of Phoenician women on their way to Delphi who are trapped in Thebes by the war. The chorus represents the innocent and neutral people that very often are found in the middle of war situations. Patriotism is a significant theme in the story, as Polynices talks a great deal about his love for the city of Thebes but has brought an army to destroy it; Creon is also forced to make a choice between saving the city and saving the life of his son. Euripides wrote the play around 408 BC, under the influence of a big defeat of his homeland, Athens, which then faced a military disaster....

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Top secret United States government UFO documents released to the public.

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The author addresses four questions: how have these air forces responded to post–Cold War political uncertainties, how have they operated, how have they responded to new air power thinking, and how have they adapted to the challenges of costs and technologies? He convincingly argues that budgetary provision has not been the most important factor in generating effective air power....

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When Francis Hawthorn, a British Colonel, is liberated from the Germans who had taught him to telepathically communicate with a blue-eyed ginger-tabby he names Cleopawtra, he is falsely declared a casualty of the First World War, and indentured to his own government for that ability. Years later, his presumed widow, Caroline, a romance novelist, spontaneously types the dreams of her own similar, but portly feline, Fatticus, which conclude with strange, nonsensical sentences that she soon discovers contain a simple code devised by her husband to convey his continued existence and current location. Meanwhile, a covert operative assigned to keep the couple apart seeks to prevent their reunion at all costs. ...

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This booklet explains why the Israel Lebanon war of 2006 was just another war for oil and natural gas. It also explores the recent war of July 2014 in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, and explains how this war is also connected to natural gas....

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Top secret government UFO documents released to the public.

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Organizational change strategies for acquisition are essential due to the enormity of change required of the acquisition community. The Congress and the DOD have made many previous attempts at acquisition reform, but most have had little effect. To make sure our current reform efforts make positive, lasting changes, we must transform the acquisition culture. To date, little attention has been paid to cultural change aspects. To that end, this paper offers some ideas for organizations undergoing change for acquisition reform....

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La historia de Enrico, el Matamoros, escrita de manera anónima por un tal Akbal Kan, forzado seudónimo en lengua maya de un conocido autor de letras hispanas, es, sin ningún margen de duda, la expresión literaria del descontento y la miseria que vive en conjunto el Pueblo de Honduras. En respuesta a tales desmanes, aparece esta pequeña pero divertida obra, que emplea el humor de las antiguas chanzas castellanas, aunque no su estilo, para ridiculizar, como en aquellos tiempos, a la nobleza, la Iglesia y, a los pérfidos enemigos de ese entonces, los moros, y que puede apreciarse en obras tales como “El lazarillo de Tormes”, del que a propósito tomaré la siguiente sentencia y que muestra el verdadero propósito de este librito: «Y todo va desta manera: que confesando yo no ser más santo que mis vecinos, desta nonada, que en este grosero estilo escribo, no me pesará que hayan parte y se huelguen con ello todos los que en ella algún gusto hallaren, y vean que vive un hombre con tantas fortunas, peligros y adversidades». Y como el mismo Akbal Kan pudo bien haberles recomendado: «Gócenla, que esta cosa es toda suya»....

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Don Ibrahim, que se había apartado ya de la religión de sus padres y en cambio adoptado el cristianismo, llevó a casa a un pastor evangélico, “un apóstol” que era popular por aparecer en un espacio televisivo, para que viera a su desdichada y aquejada consorte. No obstante, con las visitas del apóstol el semblante de doña Mina, en vez de mejorar, empeoraba. No eran efectivos ya las tocaduras de los “mantos sagrados de Belén”, el beber de las “aguas traídas exclusivamente del río Jordán”, como tampoco los ayunos en masa que el apóstol acostumbraba a hacer junto a su séquito de servidores. –Hay que exorcizarla –le dijo el apóstol Ardemal a don Jarach. La llevaron, pues, a la inmensa sala que daba al patio y comenzaron con el conjuro, sentándola en un sillón. Antes había pedido el santo prelado la ayuda de sus amigas más cercanas para sujetarla y evitar que levitara. Todas, y doña Genoveva fue la primera, habían llegado, salvo Dalila, que arribaría más tarde. Dio rienda suelta el pastor a su conjuro, al que, para hacer la ocasión más dramática entre aquellas tan distinguidas personalidades, añadía locuciones en hebreo: –En el nombr...

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Top secret United States government UFO documents released to the public.

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A new ASAT policy seems appropriate as the US faces an entirely new, but uncertain, threat with the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the rise of a multipolar world. Analyzing the ASAT debate from the past and the dynamics of the emerging space environment and threat can help in formulating that new ASAT policy—a continued ASAT research and development program, short of production and deployment, and arms control combined with collective security to diminish threat uncertainty. As the US reduces defense spending and force structure, such a policy would serve the national interests of the United States as the multipolar world develops....

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1 SETTING THE STAGE . . . . . 1 ASAT’s Past Arguments—For and Against . . . . . 1 ASAT’s Arguments—Today and Tomorrow . . . . . 3 Notes . . . . . 4 2 CONSIDERING THE ROLE AND VALUE OF MILITARY SATELLITES . . . 5 Notes . . . . . 8 3 ASAT’S GENESIS: THE ARGUMENTS BEGIN . . . 9 Early Arguments for ASAT . . . . . 9 Eisenhower Administration Hedges Its Bets . . . . 10 Resisting ASAT . . . . 10 The Rise of the Satellite Interceptor . . . . . 12 Terminating the Satellite Interceptor . . . . 13 Hedging Bets . . . . . 13 Reconsidering ASAT’s Need . . . . . 14 Summarizing the Early Days . . . . 14 Notes . . . . . 15 4 THE SOPHISTICATION OF THE ASAT CONTROVERSY . . . . 17 Soviets Initiate an ASAT Program . . . . . . 17 Revitalizing the US ASAT—The Carter “Two-Track” Policy . . . . . 18 Soviet Initiatives—And the Reagan Response . . . 20 Soviet Satellites—How Threatening Are They . . . 21 Our Growing Dependence on Satellites . . . 22 Congress Prevails—Constraining the US ASAT . . . . . . 24 Summarizing the Carter and Reagan Years . . . . 24 Notes . . . . . 25 5 CHANGING STRATEGIES . . . 27 Notes . . . . . 29 6 ASAT...

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Introduction: In an issue of the London World in April, 1890, there appeared the following paragraph: ?Two small rooms connected by a tiny hall afford sufficient space to contain Mr. Rudyard Kipling, the literary hero of the present hour, ?the man who came from nowhere,? as he says himself, and who a year ago was consciously nothing in the literary world.?...

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Contents At the Golden Gate ..................................................... 5 American Politics ....................................................... 18 American Salmon ...................................................... 29 The Yellowstone ........................................................ 37 Chicago ..................................................................... 46 The American Army ................................................... 55 America?s Defenceless Coasts ................................. 60...

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Excerpt: The third section of the ?Act further to promote the efficiency of the Navy,? approved 21st of December, 1861, provides: ?That the President of the United States by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall have the authority to detail from the retired list of the navy for the command of squadrons and single ships such officers as he may believe that the good of the service requires to be thus placed in command; and such officers may, if upon the recommendation of the President of the United States they shall receive a vote of thanks of Congress for their services and gallantry in action against an enemy, be restored to the active list, and not otherwise.?...