Description Details
Leander Stillwell was an 18-year-old Illinois farm boy, living with his family in a log cabin, when the U.S. Civil War broke out. Stillwell felt a duty to help save the Nation; but, as with many other young men, his Patriotism was tinged with bravura: the idea of staying at home and turning over senseless clods on the farm with the cannon thundering so close at hand . . . was simply intolerable. Stillwell volunteered for the 61st Illinois Infantry in January 1861. His youthful enthusiasm for the soldier's life was soon tempered at Shiloh, where he first saw a gun fired in anger, and saw a man die a violent death. Stillwell's recounting of events is always vivid, personal, and engrossing. I distinctly remember my first shot at Shiloh . . . The fronts of both lines were . . . shrouded in smoke. I had my gun at a ready, and was trying to peer under the smoke in order to get a sight of our enemies. Suddenly I heard someone in a highly excited tone calling to me from just in my rear, --'Stillwell! Shoot! Shoot! Why don't you shoot?' I looked around and saw that this command was being given by . . . our second lieutenant, who was wild wit...

Excerpt Details
Biography, History, Memoirs, War stories

Description Details
volunteers bring you 13 recordings of The Higher Pantheism by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. This was the Weekly Poetry project for September 18, 2011. Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson, FRS was Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom during much of Queen Victoria's reign and remains one of the most popular poets in the English language. ( Summary by Wikipedia )...

Excerpt Details
Animals, Instruction, Nature, Philosophy, Psychology, Religion, Poetry

Description Details
Upton Sinclair, born in 1878 was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American author. He wrote over 90 books in many genres. Best known for his muckraking novel, /the-jungle-by-upton-sinclair/ The Jungle, Sinclair also wrote adventure fiction. Many of these works were written under the pseudonym, Ensign Clark Fitch, U.S.N. A Prisoner of Morrow, published in 1898 when Sinclair was but 20 years old, is one of these efforts. The period for this work is the ten-week Spanish–American War which occurred in 1898. Revolts against Spanish rule had been prevalent for decades in Cuba and were closely watched by Americans. The main issue of the war was Cuban independence from Spain. The war was notable for a series of one-sided American naval and military victories and led to the downfall of Spain as a colonial power. Clif Faraday, a naval cadet, is the main character in this novel. Stationed on a gunboat off the Cuban island as part of the U. S. naval blockade, Clif survives a series of confrontations at sea and treacheries on land. He is captured while on the island during a mission and lands in a Cuban prison called Morro, renowned for its cru...

Excerpt Details
War stories, Sea stories, Adventure, Historical Fiction

Description Details
The Souls of Black Folk is a well-known work of African-American literature by activist W.E.B. Du Bois. The book, published in 1903, contains several essays on race, some of which had been previously published in Atlantic Monthly magazine. Du Bois drew from his own experiences to develop this groundbreaking work on being African-American in American society. Outside of its notable place in African-American history, The Souls of Black Folk also holds an important place in social science as one of the first works to deal with sociology. (Summary from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Souls_of_Black_Folk Wikipedia.org )...

Excerpt Details
Essay/Short nonfiction, History, Music

Description Details
This is volume 3 chapter 15 of a series of books written by the Baron Macaulay (1800-1959 in the 19th century. It starts with a brief resume of the history of England up until the Stuart kings and then starts to delve into a little more detail. Macaulay is primarily fascinated by ending of any claim to divine right of kings and the growing role of Parliament in the governing of the country. He sees the accession of William and Mary (Dutch, Protestant royalty) to the British throne as a key moment in the history of the British Isles. This is a book delightful for the literary gifts of the author and intriguing for his view of 18th century English and world politics. (Jim Mowatt) This volume covers part of the reign of William and Mary including the beginning of the War with Ireland. (Karen Merline)...

Excerpt Details
History

Description Details
Many readers will already be familiar with Uncle Remus’ favorite animal characters – Br’er Rabbit and Br’er Fox among them – and some of the popular tales concerning them. (To this day, “tar baby” as an expression for a particularly sticky situation that is almost impossible to solve, has passed into the English language and common use.) Even people who have never read any of these tales will know exactly why you don’t throw a rabbit into a briar patch, mainly because Walt Disney produced his first movie ever to use professional actors with animation, called “Song of the South”, based on the Uncle Remus tales. Joel Chandler Harris, a newsman in Georgia, grew up listening to folktales told by the local black population. Later, he published his version of these tales in a series of stories printed in the “Atlanta Constitution.” The tales of, and by, Harris’ chief character Uncle Remus, an old black man scrabbling to make his living in the post-Civil War South, were extremely popular and widely read. Harris’ use of innovative spelling to give the reader a sense of the black dialect was considered novel. While this is not a book that wi...

Excerpt Details
Children, Animals, Short stories

Description Details
Zadig, ou La Destinée, (Zadig, or The Book of Fate) (1747) is a famous novel written by the French Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire. It tells the story of Zadig, a philosopher in ancient Babylonia. The author does not attempt any historical accuracy, and some of the problems Zadig faces are thinly disguised references to social and political problems of Voltaire's own day. The book is philosophical in nature, and presents human life as in the hands of a destiny beyond human control. It is a story of religious and metaphysical orthodoxy, both of which Voltaire challenges with his presentation of the moral revolution taking place in Zadig himself. Voltaire's skillful use of the literary devices of contradiction and juxtaposition are shown in beautiful form in this prose. Behind Candide, it is considered one of his most celebrated works....

Excerpt Details
Philosophy, Satire, Fiction

Description Details
General Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard was one of the senior commanders of Southern forces during the Civil War. It was he who initiated the hostilities by opening fire on Ft. Sumter in Charleston harbor, in April, 1861. PARAGRAPH In July of that year, having taken command of the Confederate Army of the Potomac, he triumphed in the first serious clash of the war, at Manassas, Virginia. His army, aided by reinforcements from Johnston's army in the Shenandoah Valley, routed a Federal army under General McDowell. Had it been his army instead that routed, it is possible the Civil War might have ended that same year, as the path to Richmond would have been wide open. PARAGRAPH This is his account of the battle, including the strategic situation leading up to it. As an afterward, he added a very revealing appraisal of the relations between him and Confederate President Jefferson Davis, and the reasons why, in his opinion, the South failed to win its war of secession....

Excerpt Details
History

Description Details
Relates the story of western civilization from earliest times through the beginning of the twentieth century, with special emphasis on the people and events that changed the course of history. Portrays in vivid prose the achievements of mankind in the areas of art and discovery, as well as the political forces leading to the modern nation-states. Richly illustrated with drawings by the author. Winner of the first Newbery Award in 1922, The Story of Mankind has introduced generations of children to the pageant of world history. (Summary from mainlesson.com)...

Excerpt Details
Children, History, Teen/Young adult

Description Details
Mary Roberts Rinehart -- America's Agatha Christie, as she used to be called -- set this story in a New York suburban town, shortly after the end of the first world war. Dick Livingstone is a young, successful doctor, who in the course of events becomes engaged to Elizabeth Wheeler. But there is a mystery about his past, and he thinks himself honor-bound to unravel it before giving himself to her in marriage. In particular, a shock of undetermined origin has wiped out his memory prior to roughly the last decade. Rinehart, who presumably had been reading, or reading about, the then popular Sigmund Freud, plays on what today is called repressed memory, as she takes Dick into his past, and into the dangers that, unknown to him, lurk there. Is she correct about the behavior of memory? Who knows? After all, this is not a clinical treatise, but a work of fiction, one of the thrillers that made her such a popular writer of the earlier twentieth century.(Introduction by Nicholas Clifford)...

Excerpt Details
Adventure, Fiction, Mystery, Romance

Description Details
Can You Forgive Her? is the first in a series of six Trollope novels dealing broadly with 19th Century English political scene. It introduces the reader to Plantagenet and Glencora Palliser, as they court, marry, and as Plantagenet sets out on his political career, which is carried on in the foreground or background throughout the series. Each novel has a focus on other particular characters, as well. In this one, it is the delimma of Alice Vavasor, who is a young woman choosing between two suitors: one who has all the best qualities, but who prefers a retiring private life, and another, whose qualities are doubtful, but who is ambitious for public office. There is also a comic subplot involving a widowed aunt, who also must choose between two suitors: Mr. Cheeseacre, a dull but stable farmer, and Capt. Bellfield, a charming but somewhat erratic retired military man....

Excerpt Details
Historical Fiction

Excerpt Details
Excerpt: War and Peace: Eight by Leo Tolstoy.

Excerpt Details
Excerpt: Act I. A fine October morning in the north east suburbs of London, a vast district many miles away from the London of Mayfair and St. James?s, much less known there than the Paris of the Rue de Rivoli and the Champs Elysees, and much less narrow, squalid, fetid and airless in its slums; strong in comfortable, prosperous middle class life; wide-streeted, myriad-populated; well-served with ugly iron urinals, Radical clubs, tram lines, and a perpetual stream of yellow cars; enjoying in its main thoroughfares the luxury of grass-grown ?front gardens,? untrodden by the foot of man save as to the path from the gate to the hall door; but blighted by an intolerable monotony of miles and miles of graceless, characterless brick houses, black iron railings, stony pavements, slaty roofs, and respectably ill dressed or disreputably poorly dressed people, quite accustomed to the place, and mostly plodding about somebody else?s work, which they would not do if they themselves could help it. The little energy and eagerness that crop up show themselves in cockney cupidity and business ?push.?...

Description Details
volunteers bring you 10 recordings of The Lie by Sir Walter Raleigh. This was the fortnightly poem for the period beginning September 16, 2012. The Lie is a political and social criticism poem probably written by Sir Walter Raleigh. Speaking in the imperative mood throughout, he commands his soul to go upon a thankless errand and tell various people and organizations of their misdeeds and wrongdoings. And if they object, Raleigh commands, publicly accuse them to be lying, or give them the lie. To give the lie was a common phrase in Raleigh's time of writing....

Excerpt Details
Poetry, Historical Fiction, Philosophy, Satire

Description Details
In this volume are presented examples of men who shed lustre upon ordinary pursuits, either by the superior manner in which they exercised them or by the noble use they made of the leisure which success in them usually gives. Such men are the nobility of republics. Most of these chapters were published originally in The Ledger of New York, and a few of them in The Youths' Companion of Boston, the largest two circulations in the country. I have occasionally had reason to think that they were of some service to young readers, and I may add that they represent more labor and research than would be naturally supposed from their brevity. Perhaps in this new form they may reach and influence the minds of future leaders in the great and growing realm of business. I should pity any young man who could read the briefest account of what has been done in manufacturing towns by such men as John Smedley and Robert Owen without forming a secret resolve to do something similar if ever he should win the opportunity. (Summary by Preface)...

Excerpt Details
Children, History, Biography

Description Details
J.B. Bury wrote his History of Greece before World War I, but it was such a good overview of classical Greek history that the third edition was still being used as a college textbook in the late 1960's. In the newer editions, a co-author rewrote the material dealing with the early centuries where there have been new archeological developments, but the later chapters and Bury's framework were retained essentially unchanged. Bury writes in a lucid, easily understood style that entertains as it educates. The book covers artistic and literary development, as well as politics and war, and its field of view includes western Asia Minor, the Agean archipelago, and Greater Greece (Sicily and Southern Italy). (Summary by Karen Merline)...

Excerpt Details
History

Excerpt Details
Excerpt: A Theologico-Political Treatise: Part Three -- Chapters XI to XV by Baruch Spinoza, translated by R.H.M. Elwes.

Table of Contents Details
TABLE OF CONTENTS: CHAPTER XI ? An Inquiry whether the Apostles wrote their Epistles as Apostles and Prophets, or merely as Teachers, and an Explanation of what is meant by Apostle. The epistles not in the prophetic style. The Apostles not commanded to write or preach in particular places. Different methods of teaching adopted by the Apostles. CHAPTER XII ? Of the true Original of the Divine Law, and wherefore Scripture is called Sacred, and the Word of God. How that, in so far as it contains the Word of God, it has come down to us uncorrupted. CHAPTER XIII ? It is shown, that Scripture teaches only very Simple Doctrines, such as suffice for right conduct. Error in speculative doctrine not impious ? nor knowledge pious. Piety consists in obedience. CHAPTER XIV ? Definitions of Faith, the True Faith, and the Foundations of Faith, which is once for all separated from Philosophy. Danger resulting from the vulgar idea of faith. The only test of faith obedience and good works. As different men are disposed to obedience by different opinions, universal faith can contain only the simplest doctrines. Fundamental distinction between faith an...

Excerpt Details
Excerpt: The twelfth of May, 1796, in north Italy, at Tavazzano, on the road from Lodi to Milan. The afternoon sun is blazing serenely over the plains of Lombardy, treating the Alps with respect and the anthills with indulgence, not incommoded by the basking of the swine and oxen in the villages nor hurt by its cool reception in the churches, but fiercely disdainful of two hordes of mischievous insects which are the French and Austrian armies. Two days before, at Lodi, the Austrians tried to prevent the French from crossing the river by the narrow bridge there; but the French, commanded by a general aged 27, Napoleon Bonaparte, who does not understand the art of war, rushed the fireswept bridge, supported by a tremendous cannonade in which the young general assisted with his own hands....

Excerpt Details
Excerpt: A Slow Journey. Again two carriages stood at the front door of the house at Petrovskoe. In one of them sat Mimi, the two girls, and their maid, with the bailiff, Jakoff, on the box, while in the other-- a britchka--sat Woloda, myself, and our servant Vassili. Papa, who was to follow us to Moscow in a few days, was standing bareheaded on the entrance-steps. He made the sign of the cross at the windows of the carriages, and said:...

Excerpt Details
Excerpt: War and Peace: Book Thirteen by Leo Tolstoy.