Showing results by narrator "Bob Neufeld" in All Categories

Before its 1902 publication, "Heart of Darkness" appeared as a three part series (1899) in "Blackwood's Magazine". It was classified by the Modern Library website editors as one of the "100 best novels" and part of the Western canon. The story centers on Charles Marlow, who narrates most of the book. He is an Englishman who takes a foreign assignment from a Belgian trading company as a river boat captain in Africa.

Charles Dickens' classic Yuletide tale is one of the most popular tales of personal redemption in world literature, and has been adapted many times for presentation on film and on stage.

Although the Declaration of Independence is now considered one of the most important political documents in history, the men that drafted it did not initially favor such a move at the start of the American Revolution. Despite its assumption of governing duties, the Second Continental Congress never intended, at least initially, to become the governing body of a new nation. Instead, it merely hoped to transform the relationship between Britain and her colonies to allow for greater self-government on their side of the Atlantic.

A Christmas Carol is a novella by Charles Dickens, first published in London by Chapman & Hall on December 19, 1843. The novella met with instant success and critical acclaim. It tells the story of a bitter old miser named Ebenezer Scrooge and his transformation into a gentler, kindlier man after visitations by the ghost of his former business partner, Jacob Marley, and the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come.

From the author of Tempesta's Dream - A Story of Love, Friendship and Opera, comes a spellbinding, historical fiction novel of a young man's desire to free his Sicilian village from the domination of one family's long reign.

At the center of each of the four great Shakespearean tragedies - Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear, and Othello - is a powerful figure who is led to destruction by a fatal character flaw. In the case of Macbeth it is ambition. Initially a valiant warrior, and staunch servant of his regal overlord Duncan, Macbeth succumbs to the lure of absolute political domination, which leads to murder, revolt, and comprehensive defeat.

New Thought author and philosopher James Allen (1864 - 1912) is best known for his treatises on moral development and the power of thought, the most famous of which is As a Man Thinketh. In 1907 Allen also published a collection of poems, entitled Poems of Peace. Most of the pieces take the form of aphorisms and admonitions, delivered with the author's typical earnestness.

"Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street" is a short story by the American writer Herman Melville, first serialized anonymously in two parts in the November and December 1853 issues of Putnam's Magazine, and reprinted with minor textual alterations in his The Piazza Tales in 1856. A Wall Street lawyer hires a new clerk who, after an initial bout of hard work, refuses to make copy and any other task required of him, with the words "I would prefer not to".

During the early 20th century, groundbreaking technology revolutionized transportation both on the ground and in the sky, with new motors making automobiles and airplanes a reality in the 1910s. Around that same time, the feminist movement was underway in the United States, spearheaded by women seeking the right to vote, lobbying for the temperance movement, and trying to make their voices heard.

It is almost impossible to imagine today, but in the late 19th and early 20th century there were places where land was cheaper than food and more plentiful than water. During the homesteading period of the 1860s-1880s, the government typically offered land grants of 160 acres to any farmer who could get it cultivated within a certain amount of time. With that much land to make productive, and a limited number of years to get it cleared and planted, men would do whatever it took to get their crops in.

Dreaming of days of yore, Tim Porter organizes the return of Cosmo Draper, the town's favorite mayor. Only trouble is, Cosmo's been dead for years, right?

In the middle of February 1945, the Allies were steadily advancing against the Germans from both east and west, with British and American forces having repulsed the German offensive during the Battle of the Bulge and the Soviet Union's Red Army pushing from the east. Indeed, the war would be over in just a little more than two months. Nonetheless, it was during this timeframe that the Allies conducted one of the most notorious attacks of the war: the targeting of Dresden.

The Art of War is an ancient Chinese military treatise attributed to Sun Tzu, a high-ranking military general, strategist, and tactician. The text is composed of 13 chapters, each devoted to one aspect of warfare. It is commonly considered to be the definitive work on military strategy and tactics of its time. It has been the most famous and influential of China's Seven Military Classics, and "for the last 2,000 years it remained the most important military treatise in Asia, where even the common people knew it by name."

On Christmas Eve 1909, Mark Twain's youngest daughter, Jean, died. She was just 29 years old. Over the next two days, in his grief, he wrote of his deep love for her; her last days with him; the previous loss of his wife, another daughter, and long-ime friends; and his profound loneliness as he reached what would be his own final days. He wanted this to be the final chapter of his autobiography. Four months later he, too, was dead.

Today the Space Race is widely viewed poignantly and fondly as a race to the Moon that culminated with Apollo 11 "winning" the Race for the United States. In fact, it encompassed a much broader range of competition between the Soviet Union and the United States that affected everything from military technology to successfully launching satellites that could land on Mars or orbit other planets in the Solar System.

Initially published in 1914, Papa was the first major dramatic work by playwright and poet Zoë Akins (1886-1958). A subtle but quietly savage comedy of manners, the play was not a commercial success but has since come to be regarded as a masterpiece. As a skillfully drawn portrait of genteel corruption, it ranks with the works of masters of dramatic satire like Moliere and Oscar Wilde.

In these wonderful short stories, Washington Irving created two of the earliest, most endearing and enduring characters in all of American literature. Rip Van Winkle and Ichabod Crane (not to mention the Headless Horseman) will keep you smiling as they wrestle with the strange and fantastic forces, characters and events that baffle and terrify.

The Civil War. A man condemned to die. Does he escape and return to his wife and children? Ambrose Bierce's best-known story, the inspiration for a popular episode of The Twilight Zone, films and songs.

"The Hound of the Baskervilles" is the third of four crime novels by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle featuring the detective Sherlock Holmes. Originally serialised in "The Strand Magazine" from August 1901 to April 1902, it is set largely on Dartmoor in Devon in England's West Country and tells the story of an attempted murder inspired by the legend of a fearsome, diabolical hound.

" The Mystery of Marie Rogêt", often subtitled " A Sequel to 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue'", is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, written in 1842. This is the first murder mystery based on the details of a real crime. It first appeared in " Snowden's Ladies' Companion" in three installments, November and December 1842, and February 1843.