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) [chương_files]
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 history, literature, travel, science, medicine, war, writing, education, philosophy, and religion. (summary by J. M. Smallheer) [chương_files]
American novelist Edith Wharton was living in Paris when World War I broke out in 1914. She obtained permission to visit sites behind the lines, including hospitals, ravaged villages, and trenches. Fighting France records her travels along the front in 1914 and 1915, and celebrates the indomitable spirit of the French people. (Summary by Elizabeth Klett) [chương_files]
Seventeen goofy stories and essays by Canadian humourist Stephen Leacock. “Professor Leacock has made more people laugh with the written word than any other living author. One may say he is one of the greatest jesters, the greatest humorist of the age.” – A. P. Herbert (Introduction by TriciaG & Wikipedia) [chương_files]
Back in 1905 Jerome K. Jerome shared his thoughts on a variety of subjects, including “Should Women Be Beautiful?”, “Should Soldiers Be Polite?” and “Is The American Husband Made Entirely Of Stained Glass?”. Each subject is analysed and commented on in the witty and satirical style we’ve grown to expect from the author. [chương_files]
“A good candidate for ‘the most under-appreciated work by Mark Twain’ would be ‘The Treaty With China,’ which he published in the New York Tribune in 1868. This piece, which is an early statement of Twain’s opposition to imperialism and which conveys his vision of how the U.S. ought to behave on the global stage, has not been reprinted since its original publication until now.” (the online, open-access “Journal of Transnational American Studies” published it in the spring, 2010). (Introduction by Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Twain scholar and Director of American Studies at Stanford University, used by permission) (Transcription by Martin Zehr for the Journal of Transnational American Studies, American Cultures and Global Contexts Center, UC Santa Barbara – http://escholarship.org/uc/acgcc_jtas) [chương_files]
This is Mark Twain’s vicious and amusing review of Fenimore Cooper’s literary art. It is still read widely in academic circles. Twain’s essay, Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses (often spelled “Offences”) (1895), particularly criticized The Deerslayer and The Pathfinder. Twain wrote at the beginning of the essay: ‘In one place in Deerslayer, and in the restricted space of two-thirds of a page, Cooper has scored 114 offenses against literary art out of a possible 115. It breaks the record.’ Twain listed 19 rules ‘governing literary art in domain of romantic fiction’, 18 of which Cooper violates in The Deerslayer. (Introduction by Wikipedia and John Greenman) [chương_files]
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 history, science, literature, sports, education, humor, philosophy, nature and religion. (summary by J. M. Smallheer) [chương_files]
The Brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright made the first controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air flight, on 17th December 1903. They were not the first to build and fly aircraft, but they invented the controls that were necessary for a pilot to steer the aircraft, which made fixed wing powered flight possible. The Early History of the Airplane consists of three short essays about the beginnings of human flight. The second essay retells the first flight: This flight lasted only 12 seconds, but it was nevertheless the first in the history of the world in which a machine carrying a man had raised itself by its own power into the air in full flight, had sailed forward without reduction of speed and had finally landed at a point as high as that from which it started. (Introduction by Availle) [chương_files]
‘Pragmatism’ contains a series of public lectures held by William James in Boston 1906–7. James provides a popularizing outline of his view of philosophical pragmatism while making highly rhetorical and entertaining lashes towards rationalism and other competing schools of thought. James is especially concerned with the pragmatic view of truth. True beliefs should be defined as, according to James, beliefs that can successfully assist people in their everyday life. This is claimed to not be relativism. That reality exists is argued to be a fact true beyond the human subject. James argues, nevertheless, that people select which parts of reality are made relevant and how they are understood to relate to each other. Charles Sanders Peirce, widely considered to be the founder of pragmatism, eventually chose to separate himself intellectually from James, renaming his own theory to ‘pragmaticism’. [chương_files]
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