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    09/07/2024
    Final Report of the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities (Watergate Report), Volume 1 cover

    Final Report of the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities (Watergate Report), Volume 1

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    Chapter: 28 | Listen: 3

    This report presents the findings and recommendations of the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities based on its investigation of the Watergate break-in and coverup, illegal and improper campaign practices and financing, and other wrongdoing during the Presidential campaign of 1972. The committee’s mandate from the Senate, which was passed by a unanimous vote, was to make a “complete” investigation and study “of the extent … to which illegal, improper, or unethical activities” occurred in the 1972 Presidential campaign and election and to determine whether new legislation was needed “to safeguard the electoral process by which the President of the United States is chosen.” This project contains the introductory material and chapters 1-3 of 11.- Summary modified from the introduction     [chương_files]  

    09/07/2024
    Prison & Prisoners: Some Personal Experiences cover

    Prison & Prisoners: Some Personal Experiences

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    Chapter: 17 | Listen:

    Constance Lytton worked along Emmeline Pankhurst for the cause of women’s suffrage in England. Upset that she was getting preferential treatment by the authorities, she assumed a pseudonym (Jane Wharton) so that her titled status wouldn’t be obvious. This book chronicles her involvement in the suffrage movement, including her arrest and subsequent incarceration at Holloway Prison, a place notorious for the poor treatment of the women in their charge. – Summary by KHand     [chương_files]  

    09/07/2024
    Six Months In Mexico cover

    Six Months In Mexico

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    Chapter: 37 | Listen: 4

    This is an account of Nellie Bly’s travels through Mexico in 1885. The book was originally a series of individual articles that she submitted to the Pittsburgh Dispatch newspaper for publication. In them she described the conditions of the people and the political system she found in Mexico. Her narratives focused mostly on the impoverished and disadvantaged in a country whose government was extremely corrupt. Bly was perhaps what we now term a feminist, striving for the empowerment and independence of women. She certainly pioneered the field of investigative reporting. Nevertheless, Bly’s journalistic objectivity is often tainted by an uninformed, 19th-century, “gringo” world view. Bly’s travels in Mexico ended abruptly after the Dispatch published an article she wrote exposing that government’s ill treatment of another journalist who criticized the regime of President Porfirio Diaz. Bly’s Mexico articles were later published in book form in 1888. (Summary by James K. White)     [chương_files]  

    09/07/2024
    On the Duty of Civil Disobedience (Version 3) cover

    On the Duty of Civil Disobedience (Version 3)

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    Chapter: 2 | Listen: 3

    “That government is best which governs least” is the famous opening line of this essay. The slavery crisis inflamed New England in the 1840s and 1850s. The environment became especially tense after the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. A lifelong abolitionist, Thoreau delivered an impassioned speech which would later become Civil Disobedience in 1848, just months after leaving Walden Pond. The speech dealt with slavery, but at the same time excoriated American imperialism, particularly the Mexican–American War. Thoreau asserts that because governments are typically more harmful than helpful, they therefore cannot be justified. Democracy is no cure for this, as majorities simply by virtue of being majorities do not also gain the virtues of wisdom and justice. The judgment of an individual’s conscience is not necessarily inferior to the decisions of a political body or majority, and so “[i]t is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right…. Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice.” He adds, “I cannot for an instant recognize as my government [that] which is the slave’s government also.” from Wikipedia     [chương_files]  

    09/07/2024
    World’s Famous Orations, Vol. V: Great Britain - III cover

    World’s Famous Orations, Vol. V: Great Britain – III

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    Chapter: 20 | Listen: 3

    In 1906, William Jennings Bryan, himself a famous American orator, and Francis Whiting Halsey published a series of the most famous orations of all time. They are ordered by both geographic area and time period, ranging from Ancient Greece to their contemporary United States. The third, fourth, and fifth volumes of this collection concern British speakers. The speeches contained in this fifth volume are ordered chronologically. We begin in the year 1865 with a speech on the Canadian Confederation, and end this volume in 1906, the year in which this volume was published, with a couple of speeches on Liberalism. – Summary by Carolin     [chương_files]  

    09/07/2024
    Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 01 cover

    Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 01

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    Chapter: 34 | Listen: 5

    Edmund Burke was an Irish statesman, economist, and philosopher. Born in Dublin, he moved to London in 1750 and later served as a member of parliament between 1766 and 1794 in the House of Commons of Great Britain. He belonged to the Whig Party. Burke favored underpinning virtues with manners in society and stressed the importance of religious institutions for the moral stability and good of the state. He was an opponent to slavery and expressed appreciation for the complaints of the colonists in America before the outbreak of Revolution. This collection of his writings is the first of twelve available online at Project Gutenberg. (Adapted from Wikipedia by KevinS)     [chương_files]  

    09/07/2024
    Philosophical Rudiments Concerning Government and Society cover

    Philosophical Rudiments Concerning Government and Society

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    Chapter: 21 | Listen: 4

    De Cive (“On the citizen”) is one of Thomas Hobbes’s major works. “The book was published originally in Latin from Paris in 1642, followed by two further Latin editions in 1647 from Amsterdam. The English translation of the work made its first appearance four years later (London 1651) under the title ‘Philosophicall rudiments concerning government and society’.” It anticipates themes of the better-known Leviathan. The famous phrase bellum omnium contra omnes (“war of all against all”) appeared first in De Cive. – Summary by Wikipedia DPLs for this project were phaedo and craigdav1     [chương_files]  

    08/07/2024
    Abraham Lincoln's Inaugural Addresses cover

    Abraham Lincoln’s Inaugural Addresses

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    Chapter: 2 | Listen: 6

    Lincoln’s first inaugural address was delivered on March 4th, 1861, as the North and South were sliding towards separation and Civil War. His second inaugural, given just weeks before his assassination, was also delivered on March 4th but four years later, in 1865. Just over a month later, April 18th, 1865, the Civil War ended with the surrender of the Confederate army. This was four days after Lincoln was shot on April 14th. He died the next day. – Summary by John Greenman     [chương_files]  

    08/07/2024
    Considerations on Representative Government cover

    Considerations on Representative Government

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    Chapter: 31 | Listen: 3

    Mill’s volume was published in 1861 as an argument favoring this form of governance. Mill covers what forms of government work best, including when representative government is applicable and when not. He details appropriate functions of representative bodies and warns of problems to avoid. He distinguishes between true and false democracy. Other areas covered include how voting is carried out, the role of a second chamber in Parliament, and how an executive branch might function. (Summary by Bill Boerst)     [chương_files]  

    08/07/2024
    Free Press cover

    Free Press

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    Chapter: 21 | Listen: 2

    I propose to discuss in what follows the evil of the great modern Capitalist Press, its function in vitiating and misinforming opinion and in putting power into ignoble hands; its correction by the formation of small independent organs, and the probably increasing effect of these last. (Introduction by Hilaire Belloc)     [chương_files]