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Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43BC) was an orator, statesman, philosopher and prolific correspondent, who rose as a ‘new man’ in Rome in the turbulent last years of its republican government. Anthony Trollope, best known as a novelist, admired Cicero greatly and wrote this biography late in life in order to argue his virtues against authors who had granted him literary greatness but questioned his strength as a politician and as a man. He takes a personal approach, affording us an insight into his own mind and times as well as those of his subject. Volume I covers the period (up to the year 57BC) of Cicero’s education, his rise through the courts and offices of state to the Consulship, and his exile. Please note that footnotes - predominantly bibliographical citations and Latin quotations - are omitted unless explicitly referred to in the main text; the appendices, which consist mainly of more substantial extracts from other works, are likewise omitted. Summary by Philippa...

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Biography

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Through the U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) this series of communications has been de-classified and made public. Most names have been omitted, however much information of the sightings of UFOs in 1947 can be gleaned from these communications which were primarily between the FBI and other U.S. Government and military organizations. It should be noted that the U.S. Air Force only became a separate entity in 1947, having split from the U.S. Army at that time. And they became very busy times for the fledgling military organization. The slant of this de-classified material is chiefly written communications between the FBI and the military machine in 1947. Correspondence herein spans July and August of 1947 which will forever remain as the beginning of serious first-hand UFO experience in the annals of history. (Introduction by Roger Melin)...

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Politics

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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 physical production over relative value as judged by profits and money. He measures the worth of a business or government by the service it provides to all, not the profits in dollars it accumulates. He also makes the point that only service can provide for human needs, as opposed to laws or rules which can only prohibit specific actions and do not provide for the necessaries of life. Ford applies his reasoning to the lending system, transportation industry, international trade and interactions between labor and management. For each, he proposes solutions that maximize service and provide goods at the lowest cost and highest quality. He analyzes from a purely material viewpoint, going as far as to argue that the need for a good feeling in work environments may reflect a character flaw or weakness. However, his unflinching focus on the ultimate material products and necessities of life provide clever insights in how ...

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Memoirs

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François Pierre Guillaume Guizot (October 4, 1787 -September 12, 1874) was a French historian, orator, and statesman. Guizot was a dominant figure in French politics prior to the Revolution of 1848, actively opposing as a liberal the reactionary King Charles X before his overthrow in the July Revolution of 1830, then in government service to the citizen king Louis Philippe, as the Minister of Education, 1832-1837, ambassador to London, Foreign Minister 1840-1847, and finally Prime Minister of France from September 19, 1847 to February 23, 1848. His Popular History of France is an attractive and engrossing narrative, here presented in an easily readable English translation by Robert Black, first published in 1898. (Summary adapted from Wikipedia by Karen Merline and repeated for this volume.)...

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History

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François Pierre Guillaume Guizot (October 4, 1787 -September 12, 1874) was a French historian, orator, and statesman. Guizot was a dominant figure in French politics prior to the Revolution of 1848, actively opposing as a liberal the reactionary King Charles X before his overthrow in the July Revolution of 1830, then in government service to the citizen king Louis Philippe, as the Minister of Education, 1832-1837, ambassador to London, Foreign Minister 1840-1847, and finally Prime Minister of France from September 19, 1847 to February 23, 1848. His Popular History of France is an attractive and engrossing narravative, here presented in an easily readable English translation by Robert Black, first published in 1898. (Summary from Wikipedia with additions by Karen Merline)...

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History

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Bastiat asserted that the only purpose of government is to defend the right of an individual to life, liberty, and property. From this definition, Bastiat concluded that the law cannot defend life, liberty and property if it promotes socialist policies inherently opposed to these very things. In this way, he says, the law is perverted and turned against the thing it is supposed to defend....

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Economics/Political Economy

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A collection of short nonfiction works in the public domain. The selections included in this collection were independently chosen by the readers, and the topics encompass law, history, science, travel, philosophy, nature and religion. (summary by J. M. Smallheer)...

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Essay/Short nonfiction

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Straight from the horse's mouth', as they say. Edward Ruppelt was the first head of the U.S. Air Force's Project Blue Book, the official project initiated to investigate UFO reports beginning in 1952. This report from 1956 takes us inside these initial investigations, separates fact from fiction, and gives insight into who, when, where, and how sightings were reported and researched in open-minded fashion (for which Ruppelt was renowned), rather than in the typical hushed and secretive (and censored) manner most often associated with government and military reports which are released to the public. Dozens of specific sightings are recounted, although hundreds more had come pouring into the agency during the period covered (and hundreds, if not thousands more that were never officially reported). Here we go inside the workings of Project Blue Book, which had evolved from 2 earlier Air Force projects, and we are witness to interviews, press conferences, Pentagon briefings, and many reports from civilian and military pilots, Air Traffic Controllers, office workers, farmers, and the man on the street who reported their accounts with UFO...

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Science

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Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43BC) was an orator, statesman, philosopher and prolific correspondent, who rose as a ‘new man’ in Rome in the turbulent last years of its republican government. Anthony Trollope, best known as a novelist, admired Cicero greatly and wrote this biography late in life in order to argue his virtues against authors who had granted him literary greatness but questioned his strength as a politician and as a man. He takes a personal approach, affording us an insight into his own mind and times as well as those of his subject. This second volume of two covers his last years, BC 57-43 and the personal and political upheavals that surrounded them: the civil war between Caesar and Pompey, the death of his daughter Tullia, Caesar's dictatorship and assassination, Cicero's antagonism against Antony in the Philippics and his final struggle for the republic. Having used Cicero's letters and speeches to guide his biography, Trollope treats his other works (what he terms 'moral essays', and works on philosophy and rhetoric), and his religious beliefs, in separate chapters at the end of this volume, to which is also appende...

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Biography

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The National Gambling Impact Study Commission was given the task of conducting a comprehensive legal and factual study on the social and economic implications of gambling in the United States. This report presents the principal findings of that work and recommendations for action. (Summary from the Introduction, modified by Sam Stinson)...

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Politics

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François Pierre Guillaume Guizot (October 4, 1787 -September 12, 1874) was a French historian, orator, and statesman. Guizot was a dominant figure in French politics prior to the Revolution of 1848, actively opposing as a liberal the reactionary King Charles X before his overthrow in the July Revolution of 1830, then in government service to the citizen king Louis Philippe, as the Minister of Education, 1832-1837, ambassador to London, Foreign Minister 1840-1847, and finally Prime Minister of France from September 19, 1847 to February 23, 1848. His Popular History of France is an attractive and engrossing narravative, here presented in an easily readable English translation by Robert Black. (Summary from Wikipedia with additions by Karen Merline)...

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History

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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 duty both to avoid doing injustice directly and to avoid allowing their acquiescence to enable the government to make them the agents of injustice. Thoreau was motivated in part by his disgust with slavery and the Mexican-American War. (Summary from Wikipedia)....

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Philosophy

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François Pierre Guillaume Guizot (October 4, 1787 -September 12, 1874) was a French historian, orator, and statesman. Guizot was a dominant figure in French politics prior to the Revolution of 1848, actively opposing as a liberal the reactionary King Charles X before his overthrow in the July Revolution of 1830, then in government service to the citizen king Louis Philippe, as the Minister of Education, 1832-1837, ambassador to London, Foreign Minister 1840-1847, and finally Prime Minister of France from September 19, 1847 to February 23, 1848. His Popular History of France is an attractive and engrossing narravative, here presented in an easily readable English translation by Robert Black, first published in 1898. (Summary adapted from Wikipedia by Karen Merline.)...

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History

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Volume One of the New and Complete Newgate Calendar, covering the years 1700 through 1723, relates stories of British trials, the persons accused and the crimes committed. It is primarily based upon contemporary newspaper and pamphlet accounts of these trials. Where the criminal is particularly well known, such as the highwayman, burglar and escape artist Jack Sheppard, other sources were used as well. The readings used here are selected to illustrate different aspects of the eighteenth century criminal world and the British legal system.(Summary by Roy Shreiber)...

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History

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François Pierre Guillaume Guizot (October 4, 1787 -September 12, 1874) was a French historian, orator, and statesman. Guizot was a dominant figure in French politics prior to the Revolution of 1848, actively opposing as a liberal the reactionary King Charles X before his overthrow in the July Revolution of 1830, then in government service to the citizen king Louis Philippe, as the Minister of Education, 1832-1837, ambassador to London, Foreign Minister 1840-1847, and finally Prime Minister of France from September 19, 1847 to February 23, 1848. His Popular History of France is an attractive and engrossing narravative, here presented in an easily readable English translation. (Summary from Wikipedia with additions by Karen Merline)...

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History

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Not a few serious-minded students, [...], have been discouraged from attempting a study of Freud's dream psychology. The book in which he originally offered to the world his interpretation of dreams was as circumstantial as a legal record to be pondered over by scientists at their leisure, not to be assimilated in a few hours by the average alert reader. In those days, Freud could not leave out any detail likely to make his extremely novel thesis evidentially acceptable to those willing to sift data. - Freud himself, however, realized the magnitude of the task which the reading of his magnum opus imposed upon those who have not been prepared for it by long psychological and scientific training and he abstracted from that gigantic work the parts which constitute the essential of his discoveries. The publishers of the present book deserve credit for presenting to the reading public the gist of Freud's psychology in the master's own words, and in a form which shall neither discourage beginners, nor appear too elementary to those who are more advanced in psychoanalytic study. - Dream psychology is the key to Freud's works and to all mod...

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Psychology

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Letter Concerning Toleration by John Locke was originally published in 1689. Its initial publication was in Latin, though it was immediately translated into other languages. In this letter addressed to an anonymous Honored Sir (actually Locke's close friend Philip von Limborch, who published it without Locke's knowledge) Locke argues for a new understanding of the relationship between religion and government. One of the founders of Empiricism, Locke develops a philosophy that is contrary to the one expressed by Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan, primarily because it supports toleration for various Christian denominations. Locke's work appeared amidst a fear that Catholicism might be taking over England, and responds to the problem of religion and government by proposing toleration as the answer. Unlike Hobbes, who saw uniformity of religion as the key to a well-functioning civil society, Locke argues that more religious groups actually prevent civil unrest. Locke argues that civil unrest results from confrontations caused by any magistrate's attempt to prevent different religions from being practiced, rather than tolerating their prolifera...

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Philosophy

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This short Old Testament book tells the story of Naomi and Ruth, Naomi's daughter-in-law and great-grandmother of King David. (Summary by TriciaG)

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Religion, History

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The Agricola (Latin: De vita et moribus Iulii Agricolae, lit. On the life and character of Julius Agricola) is a book by the Roman historian Tacitus, written c 98, which recounts the life of his father-in-law Gnaeus Julius Agricola, an eminent Roman general. It also covers, briefly, the geography and ethnography of ancient Britain. As in the Germania, Tacitus favorably contrasts the liberty of the native Britons to the corruption and tyranny of the Empire; the book also contains eloquent and vicious polemics against the rapacity and greed of Rome. This translation by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb, was first published in 1877. (Summary from Wikipedia.)...

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History, Biography

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Fortress-walled Saint Catherine's monastery on the Sinai peninsula has been a pilgrimage site since its founding by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian in the 6th century. According to tradition, the monastery sits at the base of the mountain where Moses received the Tablets of the Law. Set in rugged country, accessible in times past only by a many days journey by camel across barren desert, the monastery survived intact through the centuries, and, as a result, became a rich repository of religious history—told through its icons, mosaics, and the books and manuscripts in the monastery library. Our Journey to Sinai by Agnes Bensly is the story of a visit to Saint Catherine's by a group of British scholars in the 1890's, who were drawn there in quest of manuscripts from early Christian times. The group had one particular prize in their sights. It was a second century translation of the Gospels from Greek into an Aramaic dialect called Syriac. This was a rare find indeed. One of the group, Agnes Smith Lewis, an accomplished linguist, had been to the monastery once before. On that visit, she had spotted a “palimpsest of most venerable appea...

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Memoirs, History, Travel