Showing results by author "ciesse" in All Categories

Thomas H. Huxley, an English biologist and essayist, was an advocate of the theory of evolution and a self-proclaimed agnostic. A talented writer, his essays helped to popularize science in the 19th century, and he is credited with the quote, "Try to learn something about everything and everything about something." In The Advance of Science in the Last Half Century, he presents a summary of the major developments in Physics, Chemistry and Biology during the period 1839-1889 and their impact on society, within the historical context of philosophical thought and scientific inquiry going back to ...

HERODOTUS was born at Halicarnassus, on the southwest coast of Asia Minor, in the early part of the fifth century, B. C. Of his life we know almost nothing, except that he spent much of it traveling, to collect the material for his writings, and that he finally settled down at Thurii, in southern Italy, where his great work was composed. He died in 424 B. C.The subject of the history of Herodotus is the struggle between the Greeks and the barbarians, which he brings down to the battle of Mycale in 479 B. C. The work, as we have it, is divided into nine books, named after the nine Muses, but ...

This book is an early collection of ten well-known fairy tales. It is thought to have begun the genre of fairy tales.(Summary by A.L. Gramour)

Beloved by many generations of children, A Child's Garden of Verses is a beautiful collection of children's poetry. Sometimes thoughtful, sometimes whimsical, but always fun. (Summary by Arctura)

LibriVox volunteers bring you 16 recordings of The True Christmas by Henry Vaughan.This was the Weekly project for December 17, 2023. ------Henry Vaughan was a Welsh metaphysical poet, author and translator writing in English, and a medical physician. - Summary by Wikipedia

A group of Dubliners gather together for a Christmas celebration in James Joyce's transcendent tale of the mundanity and magic in life and death. "The Dead" is taken from Joyce's collection of short stories Dubliners. (summary by Iremonger)

The Pearl of Great Price is a selection of choice materials touching many significant aspects of the faith and doctrine of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. These items were translated and produced by the Prophet Joseph Smith, and most were published in the Church periodicals of his day.The first edition was published in 1851. It became a standard work of the Church in 1880. It was divided into chapters and verses in 1902. The version being read is the 1920 edition. (Summary by Glenn O'Brien)

Born in Scotland, Alexander Dunlop Lindsay was a teacher of philosophy at a number of universities in England in the early 1900s. This brief commentary on Kant's philosophy is a work that focuses solely on some of the main ideas Kant put forth in the three Critiques. Although not comprehensive, the narrative style of this volume makes it a pleasant read and will be a valuable "break-in" point (or introduction to) the complex philosophy of Immanuel Kant. (Summary by SKwanlada)

Young, self conscious, timid stenographer for a New York businessman with a beautiful daughter (the flapper). He emulates stronger types, but alas.....is not them. He grows up in this humorous volume from 1913. - Summary by joseph tabler

Sonnet sequences, which these poems by Sidney made very popular in the Elizabethan age, reflected the Medieval motif of courtly love, whereby a wretched lover courts an unavailable woman, typically married already and faithful to her vows. The poet, although unsuccessful, is a slave to her beauty and virtue, which, by pulling in opposite directions, hold him in an agonizing tension that prolongs the sequence.Sidney wrestles creatively, though, with the restrictions of the ancient conventions. The first line of the first poem declares him an iconoclast, for he defies the very definition of a ...

Here are some classic, short Christmas stories from Charles Dickens, who, one may easily argue, was the greatest Christmas storyteller to date. In this season, may we do as Dickens' asked: "Welcome, everything! Welcome, alike what has been, and what never was, and what we hope may be, to your shelter underneath the holly, to your places round the Christmas fire, where what is sits open-hearted!" Happy Holidays! - Summary by jvanstan

The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today is an 1873 novel by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner that satirizes greed and political corruption in post-Civil War America. The term gilded age, commonly given to the era, comes from the title of this book. Twain and Warner got the name from Shakespeare's King John (1595): "To gild refined gold, to paint the lily... is wasteful and ridiculous excess." Gilding a lily, which is already beautiful and not in need of further adornment, is excessive and wasteful, characteristics of the age Twain and Warner wrote about in their novel. Another interpretation of ...

Ce n'était pas une petite tâche que de peindre les deux ou trois mille figures saillantes d'une époque, car telle est, en définitif, la somme des types que présente chaque génération et que La Comédie Humaine comportera. Ce nombre de figures, de caractères, cette multitude d'existences exigeaient des cadres, et, qu'on me pardonne cette expression, des galeries. De là, les divisions si naturelles, déjà connues, de mon ouvrage en Scènes de la vie privée, de province, parisienne, politique, militaire et de campagne. Dans ces six livres sont classées toutes les Études de moeurs qui...

The Woodlanders is one of Hardy's later novels, although he originally intended it as a successor to Far From The Madding Crowd. It concerns the life and loves of Giles Winterborne, Grace Melbury, Edred Fitzpiers, Felice Charmond and Marty South. The topics of class, fidelity and loyalty are dealt with in Hardy's exquisite style and set in the beautiful woodlands of Hintock (T.Hynes)

More New Arabian Nights: The Dynamiter (1885) is a collection of linked short stories by Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny Vandegrift. Three gentlemen of little means and no occupation meet in the Bohemian Cigar Divan, a tobacco shop with couches to sit and smoke. They read of a reward offered for information as to the whereabouts of a man with big moustaches and a sealskin coat. They agree among themselves that they will separate and search for the man so as to claim the reward. The stories that follow concern their adventures. They meet again in the cigar divan in an epilogue to their travels...

The Fortune of the Rougons (French: La Fortune des Rougon), originally published in 1871, is the first novel in Émile Zola's monumental twenty-volume series Les Rougon-Macquart. In his introduction Zola indicates that this series is intended to demonstrate the interaction of heredity and environment along the lines of natural selection and evolution. While Zola's metascience is questionable, this novel is successful in its analysis of the interaction of momentous social and political events and the everyday lives and aspirations of a provincial society. In a satisfyingly intricate, vast and ...

Little Men (published 1871) is considered the second book of the Little Women trilogy written by Louisa May Alcott. (The book Good Wives (1869) was originally the sequel to the novel Little Women (1868), however those two novels are now usually published as a single volume.) The final book of the trilogy is Jo's Boys (1886). Little Men follows the life of Jo Bhaer and the students who live and learn at the Plumfield Estate School that she runs with her husband. The mischievous kids, whom she loves and cares for as her own, learn valuable lessons as they become proper gentlemen and ladies. We ...

Los Episodios Nacionales de Benito Pérez Galdós son una gran obra cuya colección completa consta de mas 40 títulos. La primera de las series que consta de sólo diez, ha sido extractada por el propio autor en este libro, con un lenguaje bastante ameno para la lectura infantil. De este modo esta lectura pone al alcance de los mas pequeños toda la primera serie de novelas históricas de Pérez Galdós, que en este caso, narran la guerra de la Independencia de España. (Summary by KendalRigans)

Fans of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women will remember the elaborate plays which the March sisters loved to perform. This volume, published after Alcott's death, is a compilation of the real plays written by her and her sisters, which were fictionalized in Little Women. (Summary by Arielle Lipshaw) Cast: Actor 1: Algy Pug Actor 2: Marty Kris Actor 3: Matthew Reece Actor 4: Peter Bishop Actor 5: John Steigerwald Actor 6: David Lawrence Actor 7: Rashada Actor 8: Amy Gramour Actor 9: Elizabeth Klett Actor 10: Max Körlinge Actor 11: Phatsam Actor 12: Linda Velwest Narrator: Arielle Lipshaw Audio ...

NOTE: Because of the nature of this project, there was a bending of usual LibriVox procedures: pub-like background noise was encouraged, as well as group readings; and no editing was required, so in places there may be some accidental variation from the original text ... Listener be warned! Here is some more information about the genesis of the LibriVox Ulysses project. (Summary by Hugh McGuire)Still one of the most radical novels of the 20th Century, James Joyce's Ulysses is considered to have ushered in the era of the modern novel. Loosely based on Homer's Odyssey, the book follows Leopold ...