The Fire Keeper

The Fire Keeper 

By: Robert Moss

It was the time of dream-telling. In the Longhouse, in the ruddy glow of the new fire of Midwinter, the clanmothers dressed the heralds in buffalo robes and bearskins. The women crowned them with wreaths of cornhusks that fanned out around their blackened faces. They fastened braids of cornhusks, like dance rattles, to the Bigheads’ wrists and knees. They knotted corn cobs into the thong ties of the animal hides. They armed the dream heralds with huge wooden paddles, shaped like corn pounders, to stir the ashes in the firepits and make the earth tremble under the elmbark lodges of the Upper Castle. “Now you are complete,” the clan mothers told them. “You will leave the Longhouse by the men’s door and return by the women’s door. You wear the skins the animal masters have given our men on the hunt and the fruits of the earth that the Mother has entrusted to the care of our women.” [download]

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Adele King

Adele King

By: Albert Camus 

Maman died today. Or maybe yesterday (Aujourd’hui maman est morte. Ou peut-etre hier). With one of the most famous opening lines of modern French fiction, capturing the voice of a hero without intellectual pretensions or strong emotional attachments, UEtranger (1942, translated as The Outsider or The Stranger), is the best selling and the most republished French novel of the 20th-century and has been translated into more than 40 languages. Usually regarded as a classic, it is one of the few novels taught in schools and universities and found on most lists of the best modern novels. Both politicians and rock stars alike allude to it. The author of UEtranger, Albert Camus (1913-1960), was born to a poor, uneducated family in Algeria. His father died when he was one year old. He was very different from the typical French bourgeois intellectual. [download]

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The Transparent Mind

The Transparent Mind 

By: Ingram Smith

J. Krishnamurti, 1895–1986, at the outset of his life’s work in 1929, said that his only concern was to set men and women absolutely, unconditionally free. Until his death, he traveled throughout the world speaking to audiences on every continent. In support of his work, five foundations were established to coordinate the activities that grew out of his talks. In his talks, Krishnamurti asked for a particular kind of participation on the part of the audience. He was not giving a predetermined lecture to which the audience listened with agreement or disagreement; he was not presenting a point of view, doing propaganda for an idea, belief or dogma, or leading the audience to a particular conclusion. Instead, the speaker and listeners were together exploring human problems. This is an art that is learned in the very act of attending to what Krishnamurti is saying. [download]  

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The History of The Jewish People in The Age of Jesus Christ

The History of The Jewish People in The Age of Jesus Christ 

By: Emil Schurer

In the Greek and Roman period, as in earlier centuries, the Jewish population ofPalestinefluctuated considerably both in numbers and extent. From the beginning of the Hellenistic epoch to the time of the MaccabaccUi uprising, the Jewish element was gradually receding whereas the Greek element was on the advance. A significant change, liowever, resulted from the Maccabaean revolt and its after-effects: Judaism gained ground intensively and extensively, consolidating itself internally and extending its boundaries in almost every direction. At the beginning of the Maccabaean period, a compact Jewish population existed only in Judaea proper, i.e. in the region south of Samarianamed in i Maccabees VouSa or yi  7ou8a or VouSata. The area occupied b y the Jews can be determined with tolerable accuracy for the years 175—135 B.C. [download]

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The Science of Personality

The Science of Personality 

By: Lawrence A. Pervin

How are we to study the complexity of human personality? Personality psychologists follow diverse paths in their research efforts. Sometimes these paths overlap, but often they diverge in terms of what is studied as well as in how it is studied. But whichever path researchers choose to pursue, and whichever aspects of personality are of particular interest to them, they must seek to ensure that their observations are reliable and accurate. In this chapter we consider the differing research strategies pursued by personality psychologists as they seek to unravel the mystery of human personality functioning. We also consider why some investigators prefer one strategy over another and the scientific goals held in common by all investigators. [download]

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Politics in The Parish

Politics in The Parish

By: Gregory Allen Smith

Religion has always played an important role in American politics. Many ofth e earliest European settlers in the New World were motivated to cross the Atlanticby religious concerns, and the political institutions they established were influenced by their moral and religious convictions. The centrality ofr eligion in American life continued through the development ofth e colonies and the establishment ofth e United Statesas an independent nation. By the 1830s Alexis de Tocqueville, by all accounts one ofth e most prescient observers of American society and culture, argued that for Americans religion should “be considered as the first ofth eir political institutions, for although it did not give them the taste for liberty, it singularly facilitates their use thereof” (1833, 292). [download]

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A Drinking Life

A Drinking Life 

By: Pete Hamill

THIS IS A BOOK about my time in the drinking life. It tells the story of the way one human being became aware of alcohol, embraced it, struggled with it, was hurt by it, and finally left it behind. The tale has no hero. The culture of drink endures because it offers so many rewards: confidence for the shy, clarity for the uncertain, solace to the wounded and lonely, and above all, the elusive promises of friendship and love. From almost the beginning of awareness, drinking was a part of my life; there is no way that I could tell the story of the drinking without telling the story of the life. Much of that story was wonderful. In the snug darkness of saloons, I learned much about being human and about mastering a craft. [download]

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Сулла

Сулла

By: ФРАНСУ А ИНАР 

Сулла не был тем первым, кто присоединил к своему имени титул императора: первым римским императором, по крайней мере формально, был Цезарь. Все же переход Республики к императорскому режиму, наступление которого внешне выражается в исключительном праве на титу л императора (раньше он присваивался военачальникам, одержавшим значительные победы на, поле битвы) I явился длительным процессом, в котором диктатура Су ллы была основополагающим моментом. Чтобы понять, как могло измениться политическое устройство до такой степени, что в руках одного человека оказалась вся власть, которую по тем временам делила между собой дорожившая своими привилегиями аристократия, и поинтересоваться, как общество, у которого. [download]

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Vice Presidents

Vice Presidents

By: L. Edward Purcell

This is a book of reference, and it is not intended, nor is it likely, that the biographies of all forty-seven American vice presidents will be read through from start to fi nish, from John Adams to Joseph Biden. Should readers choose to do so, however, they will discover much about the political history of our nation and the role played by the vice presidents. They will also, of course, discover a wealth of interesting facts about these men, from the titillating public innuendo about William Rufus King’s sex life to the otherworldly dreams of Henry Wallace. One of the most striking conclusions to be drawn from considering the lives of the vice presidents is the extremely high quality of the men who have borne that title. [download]

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The House That Hugh Laurie Built

The House That Hugh Laurie Built

By: Paul Challen

To begin at the very beginning: Hugh Laurie born James Hugh Calum Laurie (although he has never used the first name James) came into the world in Oxford, England, on June 11, 1959, the youngest of four children. His father, William George Ranald Mundell Laurie he went simply by Ranald was a medical doctor, a Cambridge-educated general practitioner. His mother, Patricia, was a stay-athome mom, busy with Hugh and his older brother and two older sisters. From his many comments in interviews, it’s clear that Laurie’s early upbringing was governed by a relationship with his mother who died when Hugh was 29 that was very different than the one he had with his father. [download]

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The Diary of Geza Csath

The Diary of Geza Csath 

By: Dezso Kosztolanyi 

We meet Geza Csath (the pen name ofJozsefBrenner) in the fall of 1912, age 25, in the grips of writer’s block, which he is determined to defeat by writing a season’s worth of autobiography. He proceeds to reminisce over the summer just past, a memoir that appears at first to be a candid private recollection of almost ceaseless promiscuity and very occasional medical practice in the spa town of Stubnyafurdo We should know, however, that this man who claims to be “inhibited” from writing has recently produced a medical text, a volume of fiction, and the German translation of his monograph on Puccini. However serious his inability to produce more, we are certainly justified in taking his complaint with a grain of salt, and, sure enough, a paragraph later, he writes sixty pages of deft, funny, shocking, psychologically astute memoir. [download]

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I, Maya Plisetskaya

I, Maya Plisetskaya

By: Maya Plisetskaya 

Many books begin with ruminations about one’s earliestmemories.Whoremembered earlier, who started later. Should I look for another beginning? I began walking at eight months. This I don’t remember. But my numerous relatives were thrilled by my early mobility. And their delight was the start of my self awareness. My grandmother died in the summer of 1929. I remember her passing very clearly and distinctly. Our family rented a dacha, a summer house, near Moscow. And Grandmother, already looking waxy and haggard, spent long hours on an incongruous, nickel-plated bed in the large meadow in front of the house. A Chinese doctor was treating her.Hewould come to the house in a theatrically broad brimmed black hat and make mysterious motions over Grandmother. [download]

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Lips Unsealed

Lips Unsealed 

By: Belinda Carlisle

FOR MUCH OF my life, I felt like my fate was determined before I stepped into a recording studio, sang a song, or even thought about the Go-Go’s long before I joinedHollywood’s punk scene in the mid 1970s. When I was twelve years old, I was a mixed-up, restless little girl living inThousand Oaks, a working-class area inLos Angeles’sWest San Fernando Valley. My stepdad had a drinking problem, my mom was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and I was teased as being fat and stupid. I was neither, but at that age, the facts didn’t matter. I hated my life and wanted something better. I came home one day from a friend’s house holding a book that seemed like it might help me change my life. I hid it under my sweatshirt and went straight to my bedroom. I felt a tingle of excitement as I slipped it out and looked at the cover: [download]

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My Life As A Quant

My Life As A Quant 

By: Emanuel Derman

If mathematics is the Queen of Sciences, as the great mathematician Karl Friedrich Gauss christened it in the nineteenth century, then physics is king. From the mid-seventeenth century to the end of the nineteenth,Newton’s Law of Gravitation, his three Laws of Motion, and his differential calculus described with apparent perfection the mechanical motion of objects in our world and the solar system. In 1864, two hundred years afterNewton, the Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell formulated the compact and elegant differential equations that described with similarly astounding precision the propagation of light, X-rays, and radio waves. Maxwell’s equations showed that electricity and magnetism, formerly separate phenomena,were part of the same unified electromagnetic field. [download]

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History of William The Conqueror

History of William The Conqueror

By: Jacob Abbott

It lies, as will be seen upon the map, on the coast ofFrance, adjoining theEnglish Channel. The Channel is here irregular in form, but may be, perhaps, on the average, one hundred miles wide. The line of coast on the southern side of the Channel, which forms, of course, the northern border ofNormandy, is a range of cliffs, which are almost perpendicular toward the sea, and which frown forbiddingly upon every ship that sails along the shore. Here and there, it is true, a river opens a passage for itself among these cliffs from the interior, and these river mouths would form harbors into which ships might enter from the offing, were it not that the northwestern winds prevail so generally, and drive such a continual swell of rolling surges in upon the shore, that they choke up all these estuary openings, as well as every natural indentation of the land, with shoals and bars of sand and shingle. [download]

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Her Oxford

Her Oxford 

By: Judy G. Batson

If queried, Victorian Englishmen would probably have answered that most middle-class women of marriageable age were, or soon would be, wives and mothers. These Englishmen might have been surprised by the 1851 census. Out of a population of almost eighteen million, women outnumbered men in Great Britainby over 500,000, and more than 800,000 women almost 10 percent of the female population were classified as spinsters. The disparity in numbers of men and women continued to grow throughout the century; there were 1.4 million more women than men by 1911. A contributing factor was the higher mortality rate for young boys; fewer boys than girls survived past the age of fifteen. The imbalance was, however, especially great among the middle classes, and other factors besides mortality played into it. [download]

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Benjamin Hooks

Benjamin Hooks 

By: Heather Lehr Wagner

Beginning with the publication of the series Black Americans of Achievement nearly twenty years ago, Chelsea House Publishers made a commitment to publishing biographies for young adults that celebrated the lives of many of the country’s most outstanding African Americans. The mix of individuals whose lives we covered was eclectic, to say the least. Some were well known Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., for example although others we covered might be lesser known Madam C.J. Walker, for example. Some like the actor Danny Glover were celebrities with legions of adoring fans. It mattered not what an individual’s “star” quality might be, or how well known they were to the general public.What mattered was the life of the individual their actions, their deeds, and, ultimately, their influence on the lives of others and our nation, as a whole. [download]

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Aretha Franklin

Aretha Franklin 

By: Heather Lehr Wagner

Early on the chilly morning of January 20, 2009, more than a million people gathered along the National Mall inWashington, D.C., eager to see history being made. The occasion was the inauguration of the forty-fourth president of the United States, Barack Obama, the nation’s first African-American president. As the crowds gathered in the vast space between the WashingtonMonumentand the Capitol, many more prepared to watch the inauguration on television or the Internet. The inauguration began with opening remarks by Senator Dianne Feinstein of Californiaand an invocation, or opening prayer, by minister Rick Warren, founder and senior pastor of the SaddlebackChurchand author of the popular book The Purpose Driven Life. Then, Senator Feinstein returned to the podium to introduce the “world-renowned musical artist Aretha Franklin.” [download]

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Samuel Johnson: The Struggle

Samuel Johnson: The Struggle 

By: Jeffrey Meyers

Samuel Johnson moralist, poet, essayist, critic, dictionary maker, conversationalist and larger-than-life personality had a formidable intellect and a passion for ideas. A man of humble background, he used his great mind and dominant character to overcome his physical defects, complete ambitious literary projects, and gain acceptance and honors. He also had a compassionate heart and a heroic capacity for suffering. He endured constant pain, long years of profound depression and two decades of failure. Ford Madox Ford called him “the most tragic of all our major literary figures.” Johnson struggled with disease from the moment of his birth to his final fight. From infancy he was blind in one eye and deaf in one ear. In childhood he had tubercular lesions on his neck and smallpox that left scars on his face. [download]

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Lady Blue Eyes: My Life with Frank

Lady Blue Eyes: My Life with Frank 

By: Barbara Sinatra

I have always been a private person, so the idea of writing a book about my life with Frank didn’t come naturally to me. My husband was also extremely private and never wrote his memoirs, although he did consider it for a while. I think if he had, though, his reminiscences would have been much more about the music than about the life. The decision to sit down with the writer Wendy Holden and bear witness came about because several of those closest to me persuaded me that I had a unique perspective on what it was like to live with Frank Sinatra, a man who still commands worldwide fascination years after his death. Who else but his widow could speak of him so honestly, writing an open love letter to her husband while revealing him as a fully rounded individual, brilliantly talented yet utterly human, warts and all? [download]  

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