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In 1898, during the construction of river-crossing bridge for the Uganda Railway at the Tsavo River, as many as 135 railway workers were attacked at night, dragged into the wilderness, and devoured by two male lions. The Man-Eaters of Tsavo is the autobiographical account of Royal Engineer Lt. Col. J.H. Patterson's African adventures. Among them, his hunt for the two man-eaters. This book was the basis for the 1996 film The Ghost and the Darkness. (Summary by James Christopher)...

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”Why do you choose such a title as The Valley of Vision for your book” said my friend; “do you mean that one can see farther from the valley than from the mountain-top?” This question set me thinking, as every honest question ought to do. Here is the result of my thoughts, which you will take for what it is worth, if you care to read the book. The mountain-top is the place of outlook over the earth and the sea. But it is in the valley of suffering, endurance, and self-sacrifice that the deepest visions of the meaning of life come to us. I take the outcome of this Twentieth Century War as a victory over the mad illusion of world-domination which the Germans saw from the peak of their military power in 1914. The united force of the Allies has grown, through valley-visions of right and justice and human kindness, into an irresistible might before which the German “will to power” has gone down in ruin. (From the Preface)...

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This was originally a lecture given by Thoreau in 1851 at the Concord lyceum titled The Wild . He revised it before his death and it was included as part of the June 1862 edition of Atlantic Monthly. This essay appears, on the surface, to be simply expounding the qualities of Nature and man's place therein. Through this medium he not only touches those subjects, but with the implications of such a respect for nature, or lack thereof. (Summary by Chris Masterson)...

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Essay/Short nonfiction

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...A lecture on the art of fiction, given by the English critic Walter Besant on April 25, 1884, and an answer to the lecture by American writer Henry James in the same year. (Summary by Julie VW)...

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Literature

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History Of Egypt, Chaldæa, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria is the masterwork of one of the fathers of modern egyptology. This work, in twelve volumes, was translated from the French original, “Histoire ancienne des peuples de l'Orient classique” and published in 1903-1904. Maspero was a largely self-taught master of hieroglyphic translation. In November 1880, he was placed at the head of a French archeological mission, which developed later into the Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale. Maspero then succeeded Mariette as director-general of excavations and of the antiquities of Egypt. “Aware that his reputation was then more as a linguist than an archaeologist, Maspero's first work in the post was to build on Mariette's achievements at Saqqara. He expanded their scope from the early Old Kingdom to the later, with particular interest in tombs with long and complete hieroglyphic inscriptions that could help illustrate the development of the Egyptian language. Selecting five later Old Kingdom tombs, he was successful in that aim, finding over 4000 lines of hieroglyphics which were then sketched and photographed. “As an aspect of his...

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History

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...Henry Scougal was born in Scotland in 1650. The son of the Bishop of Aberdeen, he flourished under rigorous teaching to become Professor of Philosophy at King's College, Aberdeen. In 1672, Scougal was ordained minister in Auc...

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Religion

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...Henry Ford profiles the events that shaped his personal philosophy, and the challenges he overcame on the road to founding the Ford Motor Company. Throughout his memoir, he stresses the importance of tangible service and phys...

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Memoirs

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...A Small Boy and Others is a book of autobiography by Henry James published in 1913. The book covers James's earliest years and discusses his intellectually active family, his intermittent schooling, and his first trips to Europe. (Summary from Wikipedia)...

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Memoirs

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Samuel Butler's biographer dedicates his urbane account of the culture and entertainments of rural Sicily to the unborn son of his guide to them. (Summary by R. S. Steinberg)...

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Travel

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...Civil Disobedience is an essay by Henry David Thoreau. Published in 1849 under the title Resistance to Civil Government, it expressed Thoreau’s belief that people should not allow governments to overrule or atrophy their consciences, and that people have a du...

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Philosophy

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...Henry Walton Bibb was born a slave. His father was white although his identity was not positively known. Bibb was separated from his mother at a very young age and hired out to other slave owners for most of his childhood. Al...

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Biography, History, Memoirs

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Summary coming soon!

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Advice, Instruction, Science

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...Sir Henry Morton Stanley is famously quoted for saying Dr Livingstone, i Presume?. Born in Wales, he migrated over to the United States at the age of 18, he eventually became an overseas correspondent for the New York Herald. In ...

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Adventure, Biography, History, Travel

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This book is not written for professional musicians, but for untaught lovers of the art. It gives broad instruction on composers, styles, instruments, venues - and when to believe the critics. (Summary by Sarah Jennings)...

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Music, Instruction

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A compilation of chronicles of the numerous impostors and impostures of kings, queens, and rulers. (Summary by Carmen H)

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Biography, History

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...Henry Augustin Beers (1847-?), native of Buffalo, NY and professor of English at Yale, with the help of John Fletcher Hurst (1834-1903), Methodist bishop and first Chancellor of American University, has written a sweeping tho...

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History, Literature

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A religious autobiography of unsurpassed interest, the simple confidential tone of which revolutionized the popular estimate of its author, establishing the strength and sincerity of the convictions which had led him into the Roman Catholic Church(Wikipedia).No autobiography in the English language has been more read; to the nineteenth century it bears a relation not less characteristic than Boswell's 'Johnson' to the eighteenth. Rev. Wm. Barry, D.D....

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Biography, Religion

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The first volume of Lea’s monumental work on the Inquisition of Spain, covering its origin and establishment and its relations with the state. Also included are appendices listing Tribunals, Inquisitors-General, and Spanish coinage. (Summary by Ruth Golding)...

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History, Religion

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...s in opposition were written under pseudonyms, such as Brutus, Centinel, and Federal Farmer. Eventually, famous revolutionary figures such as Patrick Henry came out publicly against the Constitution. They argued that the strong national government proposed by the Federalists was a threat to the rights of individuals and that the President would become a king. They objected...

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Philosophy, Essay/Short nonfiction, Politics

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Ambassador Morgenthau’s memoirs of his years in the service of the United States in Constantinople, (today Istanbul), are an important primary historical resource for the study of the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and the Armenian Genocide. During this genocide, approximately 1,500,000 Armenians living in Anatolia were murdered in an attempt to rid Turkey of its non-Turkish populations. Mr. Morgenthau left Turkey a frustrated man, having done all that he was able through diplomatic circles to halt the murders, to no avail. Today, Turkey’s official position is that their attempt to annihilate the Armenian population in Turkey was not a genocide. In 2010, the American House Foreign Relations Committee passed House Resolution 252, officially recognizing the Armenian Genocide. “If we hope to stop future genocides we need to admit to those horrific acts of the past. When Hitler had to convince his cohorts that the world would let them get away with it, he turned to them and said, ‘Who today speaks of the annihilation of the Armenians?’,” said Congressman Brad Sherman, co-sponsor of the resolution. “The last act of any genocide is gen...

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Memoirs, Biography, History, Politics

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...Henry Gray's classic anatomy textbook was first published in 1858 and has been in continuous publication ever since, revised and expanded through many successive editions. This recording is of the public-domain 1918 US editio...

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Science, Nature, Instruction

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...Henry Gray's classic anatomy textbook was first published in 1858 and has been in continuous publication ever since, revised and expanded through many successive editions. This recording is of the public-domain 1918 US editio...

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Instruction, Science, Nature

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The spiritual classic The Greatest Thing In the World is a trenchant and tender analysis of Christian love as set forth in the thirteenth chapter of I Corinthians. The other addresses speak to other aspects of Christian life and thought. (Summary by Pattymarie)...

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Religion, Philosophy, Psychology

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Sailing voyage from England to Portugal in the mid Eighteenth Century, by one of the premier humorists, satirists, novelists and playwrights of his age. It was to be his last work, as his failing health proved unable to persevere much longer after the voyage. ( Summary by JCarson )...

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Adventure, Sea stories, Travel

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This speech was given March 23, 1775, at St. John’s Church in Richmond, Virginia, and is credited with having singlehandedly convinced the Virginia House of Burgesses to pass a resolution delivering the Virginia troops to the Revolutionary War. In attendance were Thomas Jefferson and George Washington. Reportedly, the crowd, upon hearing the speech, jumped up and shouted, “To Arms! To Arms!” (Summary from Wikipedia)...

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Essay/Short nonfiction, History, Teen/Young adult

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...Henry Gray's classic anatomy textbook was first published in 1858 and has been in continuous publication ever since, revised and expanded through many successive editions. This recording is of the public-domain 1918 US editio...

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Science, Instruction, Nature

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...Henry Gray's classic anatomy textbook was first published in 1858 and has been in continuous publication ever since, revised and expanded through many successive editions. This recording is of the public-domain 1918 US editio...

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Nature, Science, Instruction

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...l as seasoned professional, Thinking as a Science is timeless classic. Through eleven chapters, the last being a descriptive, annotated bibliography, Henry Hazlitt systematically takes the step-by-step on the process of introducing logic and context into the thinking process. The rather long chapter on Reading and Thinking clarifies several notions on where one needs to un...

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Economics/Political Economy, Psychology

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...Henry Gray's classic anatomy textbook was first published in 1858 and has been in continuous publication ever since, revised and expanded through many successive editions. This recording is of the public-domain 1918 US editio...

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Science, Nature, Instruction

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The Abraham Lincoln Statue at Chicago is accepted as the typical Westerner of the forum, the rostrum, and the tribune, as he stood to be inaugurated under the war-cloud in 1861. But there is another Lincoln as dear to the common people--the Lincoln of happy quotations, the speaker of household words. Instead of the erect, impressive, penetrative platform orator we see a long, gaunt figure, divided between two chairs for comfort, the head bent forward, smiling broadly, the lips curved in laughter, the deep eyes irradiating their caves of wisdom; the story-telling Lincoln, enjoying the enjoyment he gave to others. (from the preface of the book)...

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Biography, History

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...Henry Ossian Flipper--born into slavery in Thomasville, Georgia on March 21, 1856--did not learn to read and write until just before the end of the Civil War. Once the war had ended, Flipper attended several schools showing a...

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Biography, History, Memoirs

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...East by West: a Journey in the Recess is an account of British journalist Henry Lucy's travels across America and on to the Far East in 1883, within two or three decades of the American Civil War, the Indian Mutiny and the end of Japan's isolation from the western world. Lucy was one of the most in...

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History, Memoirs, Travel

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Vizetelly, writing under the pseudonym J. Tyrwhitt Brooks, recalls an expedition to California he took between 1847-1848 . Originally, he planned to enlist as a surgeon for the US Army during the Mexican war, but conflicts had ended by the time he applied. In a quick change of plans, he joined a group of prospectors on their way to the newly found gold fields of California. While he might not find service in the military, his training as a physician made him a valuable addition to the ragtag team of explorers. His training as a physician gives us an exacting perspective of the events and people who struck out from more sedate routines to prospect gold in the Californian wilderness. However, he is unprepared to find a cure for the gold fever that has depopulated the surrounding towns. Only one member of the group, an experienced fur-trapper, is able to resist the lustrous lure of nuggets, flakes and gold richly deposited in the dusty desert. Like the others who have left jobs to prospect for gold, he learns how to live on the land and struggle through hardship away from the security of city life. His motley group of changing characte...

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Memoirs, Travel

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...ivil Disobedience (Resistance to Civil Government) is an essay by American transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau that was first published in 1849. In it, Thoreau argues that individuals should not permit governments to overrule or atrophy their consciences, and that they have a duty to avoid allowing such acquiescenc...

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Philosophy, Politics

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...Walden by Henry David Thoreau is one of the best-known non-fiction books written by an American. Published in 1854, it details Thoreau’s life for two years, two months, and two days around the shores of Walden Pond. Walden is neither a...

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Nature, Philosophy

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A review of events prior to, during and following the American Civil War bringing an insightful perspective on Lincoln's true attitude toward slavery and emancipation. (Summary by Guero)...

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History, Biography

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Its purpose … is to tell in simple fashion the story of some Americans who showed that they knew how to live and how to die; who proved their truth by their endeavor; and who joined to the stern and manly qualities which are essential to the well-being of a masterful race the virtues of gentleness, of patriotism, and of lofty adherence to an ideal. It is a good thing for all Americans … to remember the men who have given their lives in war and peace to the service of their fellow-countrymen, and to keep in mind the feats of daring and personal prowess done in time past by some of the many champions of the nation in the various crises of her history. (Summary from the book’s dedication.)...

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History, War stories

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...Faces and Places is a collection of articles on nineteenth century travel, events and personalities by the British journalist Henry Lucy, who wrote for the Daily News, a London newspaper. His open letter To Those About to Become Journalists rings as true today as when it was written.<P/>The first article, Fred Burnaby, includes a lively account of a...

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Humor, Essay/Short nonfiction

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Cyrus W. Field had a dream: to link the Old World of Britain and Europe to that of the New World of North America by a telegraph cable stretching across the great Atlantic Ocean. It took him thirteen years, a lot of money, and many men and ships and cable to make it happen. He wanted to bring the world together and make it a smaller place; to forge alliances and achieve peace. This is his story. (Introduction by Alex C. Telander)...

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History, Science

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...East by West: a Journey in the Recess is an account of British journalist Henry Lucy's travels across America and on to the Far East during the parliamentary recess in 1883. Lucy was one of the most influential journalists of his day and, as Toby M.P., a noted humorist in Punch magazine. His acute ...

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Travel, Memoirs, History