Résultats de "Various Various" dans Toutes les catégories

"It is a foolish thing to speak on every kind of work, for he that disputeth thy words shall put them unto proof." Proverbs of Fair Speech, by Ptah-hotep an Egyptian vizier, is one of 15 reader-chosen recordings in vol. 106. Other reflective selections are The Appearance of Good Angels; Latin School Prize Declamation; The Persecutions of Beauty; Instructions of Kegemni; The Teaching of Amen-Em-Apt; Rights of Aliens in the United States; and The Triton Fountain. Science-focused articles include The Influence of Temperature on a Mendelian Character; The Effects of Temperature Upon Growing Mice; ...

"There are few books which go with midnight, solitude, and a candle." H. M. Tomlinson's charming essay Bed-Books and Night-Lights is one of 15 reader-chosen recordings in vol. 108. Other easy listening pieces are My Neighbor and Myself and Animal Sketching. Social concerns are central to Composite Nation; A Study of Twentieth Century Success; Age and Eminence; The Case Against Socialism; and Speech to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, Rhode Island. Science is highlighted in Jethro Tull (Dry Farming); Circumstances Affecting the Heat of the Sun's Rays; and Volcanic Eruption of Mount Tambora. ...

Fifteen short nonfiction works in the public domain, independently chosen by the readers. Topics include the impact of World War I on human society and endeavor: In 1916, Woodrow Wilson declares that "real glory" comes from wartime "self-sacrifice," and Wilson's call is taken up by an American officer on the front ranks who writes that he could "not have wished a better way to die than for a righteous cause and one's country." Meanwhile, German industrialists experiment with textile fibers made from wood pulp and nettles, as cotton supplies are cut off, and an American sculptress, Anna Chapman...

Seventeen short nonfiction works in the public domain, independently chosen by the readers. Topics include science and natural history--the donkey, forestry, grape vines, astronomy, historian Agnes Mary Clerke, and Greek botanist Theophrastus ; philosophy-- Nicholas of Cusa and Emmanuel Kant; Sommerset Maugham's reminiscences of Spain; Joseph Conrad's sea stories; an encounter with a long-ago companion who has contracted leprosy (Joe of Lahaina); working in the dead-letter office; a dinner the painter Benjamin Hayden hosted for Wordsworth, Keats, and Charles Lamb; a portrait of Margaret Fuller...

Sixteen short nonfiction works in the public domain, independently chosen by the readers. Topics include science and natural history--carnivorous plants, tadpoles, tent caterpillars, flights of birds, horse training, dogs, children's sign language, trees in winter, and night noises in the woods; philosophy--Roger Bacon and Nicholas of Cusa; satire and literary criticism--the movies as "stupies," bustles, and facetious plots for short stories by Dorothy Parker; also an appraisal of Conrad Aiken's poetry, and an intimate look at Abraham Lincoln's early life in Illinois. (Summary by Sue Anderson)

"Fine experience lies at one's own doorstep" writes Raymond S. Spears, suggesting that boating on the Mississippi River offers "taunts to daring spirits." Exploration of the natural world and the human psyche figure in many of the reader-chosen selections in vol. 094: Wasps, Seedling Fruits, The Sun's Motion, The Atomic Bomb, The Altruist in Politics, The Sexual Life of Our Time, Concerning Witchcraft, and The Making of an Aviator. Place and persons receive attention in General Hazard Stevens, James Fenimore Cooper, Will Rogers, Majorian, Racimer, Workaday London, and Palace of the Alhambra. ...

"Grandmother and Stockhausen are of the opinion that Wagner will one day totally disappear. His music, they argue, is too unhealthy." Clara Schumann's grandson's diary entries for 1894-1896 are a delight for music lovers. Other artistic and literary selections, chosen by vol. 104 readers, include Boadicea; Of the Green Children; A Search for Robinhood; What is a Child?; the Book Collector; Memoirs of Claude Seurat and of painter Georges Seurat; Schumann as Mirrored in His Letters; and Replies by Teachers to Questions Respecting Mental Fatigue. Historical perspectives on a variety of issues ...

Twenty short nonfiction works chosen by the readers. A review of William Carlos Williams' "Kora in Hell" by Robert McAlmon is one of several selections devoted to literature and learning. Others are H. P. Lovecraft's "Literary Composition;" George Herbert Betts's "The Mind and Its Education;" William Wells Newell's "Michelangelo as Poet;" and Thoreau's "Wild Apples." Humor receives its due in "The Methods of Mr. Sellyer: A Book Store Study" (Stephen Leacock); "The Plumber" (Charles Dudley Warner); "The Yawn of the Computer Age" (NSA Cryptolog); and an unnamed boy's "Essay on Girls." Innovation...

"The democracy of the future will sicken of a chronic and mortal boredom," was Aldous Huxley's prophecy for the United States in 1923. You won't be bored listening to these 20 recordings, selected by their readers, with topics ranging from Leacock's humorous Manual of Education to Unamuno's Tragic Sense of Life. There's an artist's diary (Thomas Cole); an after-dinner speech (Mark Twain); reflections on Beauty by John Burroughs; Willa Cather and Christopher Morley on writing; and Leibniz on the Origin of Things. Political topics include the Power of Third Parties; the House of Commons; the ...

Fifteen short nonfiction works in the public domain, independently chosen by the readers. Volume 62 features several introspective essays: by T. S. Eliot (Tradition and Individual Talent), Stephen Leacock (The Decline of the Drama), Carlyle (The Sacredness of Work), and Jonathan Swift (A Meditation Upon a Broomstick). Life questions are further explored by theologians Agrippa von Nettesheim (The Vanity of Arts and Sciences) and Spurgeon (Effectual Calling, Sermon # 73), while spiritualist Andrew Jackson Davis presents his understanding of death and dying (The Portal of the Unknown). Public and...

"Editors of some of the most sensational newspapers say they make a newspaper to suit the public... it must startle with incident and surprise, found or invented." Charles Dudley Warner's lament, from Literature and the Stage, written in 1889, is testimony to the constancy of human preoccupations. War, religious persecution, foreign travel and exploration, dreams and nightmares, even chicken eggs and mice are among the 15 reader chosen topics in volume 107. The volume also contains a timely injunction to Do It Now and a formula to find the day of the week for any given date. Summary by Sue ...

"It is difficult for the human mind to take a comprehensive view of a subject." This is how librarian Arthur Bostwick begins his essay Three Kinds of Librarians. Many volume 102 readers chose faceted inquiry into the human experience: the Balfour Declaration; Ethics and the Weather; Typhoid Fever in Melbourne; High-Grade Men; Attractive Labor; Forced Sterilization; If Your Baby Must Travel in Wartime; Shall We Scrap the Calendar?; Impossibility of Witchcraft; Phenomena Called Spiritual; the Mutability of Literature; and Dining Out. Also included in the volume are biographies of two Polish ...

Seventeen short nonfiction works in the public domain, independently chosen by the readers. Topics include philosophy--Bertrand Russell, Spinoza, and Epictetus; science and invention--the Wright brothers, Leibniz, arctic explorer Sir John Franklin, spider webs, and cylindrical silos; plays and cinema--Lillian Gish and Friedrich Schiller; satire--selections from Ambrose Bierce, Robert Benchley, and Seneca; biographies--Aaron Burr, and Sophia Packard of Spellman College; the murder of Archbishop Charles Seghers in Alaska in 1886; and a history of Torre Abbey in England. Summary by Sue Anderson ...

Twenty short nonfiction works chosen by the readers. Is the sound of a dripping faucet music? According to Aldous Huxley, "The music of the drops is the symbol and type of the whole universe... asymptotic to sense, infinitely close to significance, but never touching it." (Water Music). Sensory and psychological exploration define several recordings in Vol. 075 (On the Pleasures of Friendship; Prohibition; The Danger of Lying in Bed; The Effects of Opium in Lowness of Spirits; How to Listen to Music; The Story of the Alphabet; Letter from William Blake; and Poets). Narrative history and ...

“Oh, mother, I would like to know everything.” “You can never know everything, my child, but you can learn many things from books.” According to children's book author James Baldwin (1841-1925), book reading was the key to success in life (Read and You Shall Know). Several vol. 083 selections tackle the thorny questions of how to foster open-mindedness, creativity, and compassion in the child and adult: (The Road to Success; Young People and Insurance; William Paley on Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy; Letter from Françoise d'Aubigné; Looking Ahead for Democracy (1919): ...

Eighteen short nonfiction works in the public domain, independently chosen by the readers. Topics include ancient Greek thinkers--Parmenides, Demosthenes, Euclid; William Lloyd Garrison and the National Anti-Slavery Convention; 19th and 20th century philosophers, sociologists, theologians and essayists--Bertrand Russell, Walter Rauschenbusch, Kierkegaard, N.F.S. Brundtvig, Frederik Sibbern, Hans Lassen Martensen, Oscar Wilde; science and invention--sunspots, paper making, aviation; and the shipwreck adventures of Alexander Selkirk, the real Robinson Crusoe. (summary by Sue Anderson) Learning ...

Twenty short nonfiction works, individually chosen by the readers. "The ground rose and fell in successive furrows, like the ruffled waters of a lake, and I became bewildered in my ideas..." John James Audubon's vivid recollection of the 1812 New Madrid earthquake is one of several Vol. 072 selections with a scientific focus. Others include Luminous Plants; The Sunbeam and the Spectrascope; and biographies of two shipbuilders: Robert Fulton and Thomas Andrews. The emotive and rational sides of human nature are evinced in essays (The Game of Scandal; Bashful; Child Psychology and Nonsense); ...

"A regard for decency, even at the cost of success, is but the regard for one's own dignity" was novelist Joseph Conrad's take on fame, a quote from the preface to his autobiography A Personal Record (1912). Other lives chosen by readers to examine in vol. 085 include the Borgias; the Cynocephali; Hermann von Helmholtz; Edgar Allan Poe; John Burroughs; a pre-Revolutionary War magnate named Browne, who built a mansion on the ridge of a hill; women as a social class; and an 1821 rabies victim named Thomas, who exhibited hydrophobia. Political history receives scrutiny in Some Materials and a ...

"Of all effects of weather, snow makes the greatest change in animal economy in the countryside, and weeks often pass before the old order is restored." [English Animals in Snow.] Many of the reader-chosen selections in vol. 101 look at disruptions in the status quo. Weather features in A Drop of 4000 feet; Geographic Aspect of Culture; and Effects of Weather Upon Death Rate and Crime in India. The impact of disease is made clear in The History of Syphilis. The disruptive power of technology is shown in Thomas Edison, Greatest of Inventors. Societal and religious strife are examined in ...

"Pneumatic tubes, instead of store wagons, will deliver packages and bundles." Store purchases by tube was one of John Watkins Jr's predictions for What May Happen in the Next Hundred Years, written in 1900. Man and womankind's achievements, and their failures, are central to many of the reader chosen nonfiction pieces in vol. 091 (Racial Geography, Airmail Pilots, The Skeleton in the Closet, On Noise, Progressive Party Platform, Impeachment of President Andrew Johnson, Haroun Al-Raschid, Plea for Atheism, Cry of the Children, Address to Medical Students, The Brotherhood of the Kingdom, ...