Biography & Autobiography
- Adventurers & Explorers 15
- Artists, Architects, Photographers 16
- Business 1
- Composers & Musicians 14
- Criminals & Outlaws 5
- Editors, Journalists, Publishers 6
- Educators 1
- Entertainment & Performing Arts 3
- General
- Health, Exercise & Fitness 1
- Historians 3
- Historical 83
- Law Enforcement 1
- Lawyers & Judges 3
- Literary 147
- Medical 7
- Military 48
- Naturalists, Gardeners, Environmentalists 8
- Personal Memoirs & Diaries 226
- Philosophers 3
- Political 9
- Presidents & Heads of State 38
- Religious 38
- Rich & Famous 27
- Scientists 13
- Women 31
General Books
Sort by:
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON When a popular writer dies, the question it has become the fashion with a nervous generation to ask is the question, ‘Will he live?’ There was no idler question, none more hopelessly impossible and unprofitable to answer. It is one of the many vanities of criticism to promise immortality to the authors that it praises, to patronise a writer with the assurance that our...
more...
by:
Frank Lewis Dyer
CHAPTER I THE AGE OF ELECTRICITY THE year 1847 marked a period of great territorial acquisition by the American people, with incalculable additions to their actual and potential wealth. By the rational compromise with England in the dispute over the Oregon region, President Polk had secured during 1846, for undisturbed settlement, three hundred thousand square miles of forest, fertile land, and...
more...
No golden eagle, warm from the stamping press of the mint, is more sharply impressed with its image and superscription than was the formative period of our government by the genius and personality of Thomas Jefferson. Standing on the threshold of the nineteenth century, no one who attempted to peer down the shadowy vista, saw more clearly than he the possibilities, the perils, the pitfalls and the...
more...
DEMOSTHENES THE ORATOR WHO STAMMERED Modern critics are fond of discriminating between talent and genius. The fire of genius, it seems, will flame resplendent even in spite of an unworthy possessor's neglect. But the man with talent which must be carefully cherished and increased if he would attain distinction by its help—that man is the true self-helper to whom our hearts go out in sympathy....
more...
by:
Mary L. Day
INTRODUCTION. Mrs. Arms has asked me to write an introduction to her book. It hardly seems to need it. The title-page shows that it was written by one who is blind. It is a sequel to another volume. That volume has been widely sold, and all who read it will, I am sure, have some desire to see how the stream of the life of its writer has been flowing since her first book was written. Her patient...
more...
by:
Various
SOJOURNER TRUTH, THE LIBYAN SIBYL by Harriet Beecher Stowe Many years ago, the few readers of radical Abolitionist papers must often have seen the singular name of Sojourner Truth, announced as a frequent speaker at Anti-Slavery meetings, and as travelling on a sort of self-appointed agency through the country. I had myself often remarked the name, but never met the individual. On one occasion, when...
more...
A Quick Passage. To the editor of the "China Mail." Dear Sir:—I have just read with much pleasure the report of the quick passage made by the sailing-ship "Muskoka" from Cardiff to this port in ninety-two days. This is really a good trip and the captain and his officers may be complimented on having done so well, for, as you know, the ship is of large tonnage and the complement of men...
more...
by:
Luther Benson
CHAPTER I. Early shadows--An unmerciful enemy--The miseries of the curse--Sorrow and gloom--What alcohol robs man of--What it does--What it does not do-- Surrounding evils--Blighted homes--A Titan devil--The utterness of the destroyer--A truthful narrative--"It stingeth like an adder." Truth, said Lord Byron, is stranger than fiction. He was right, for so it is. Another has declared that if any...
more...
by:
Lyndon Orr
THE EMPRESS CATHARINE AND PRINCE POTEMKIN It has often been said that the greatest Frenchman who ever lived was in reality an Italian. It might with equal truth be asserted that the greatest Russian woman who ever lived was in reality a German. But the Emperor Napoleon and the Empress Catharine II. resemble each other in something else. Napoleon, though Italian in blood and lineage, made himself so...
more...
Chapter I. 1776-1794Josephine's voyage to France.In the year 1776 a very beautiful young lady, by the name of Josephine Rose Tascher, was crossing the Atlantic Ocean from the island of Martinique to France. She was but fifteen years of age; and, having been left an orphan in infancy, had been tenderly reared by an uncle and aunt, who were wealthy, being proprietors of one of the finest plantations...
more...