History Books

The question of the Kurdish people has existed for centuries, regarded with utmost seriousness and orderliness by the Kurds themselves. Armed occupiers have repeatedly invaded Kurdistan, forcing the Kurds to take up arms in self-defense. The enemies have refused to recognize the Kurds’ very existence, seeking through pressure and massacre to erase their identity and even their name from history.... more...

CHAPTER I. THE CAUSE OF THE WAR WITH SPAIN. Many causes led up to the Spanish-American war. Cuba had been in a state of turmoil for a long time, and the continual reports of outrages on the people of the island by Spain greatly aroused the Americans. The "ten years war" had terminated, leaving the island much embarrassed in its material interests, and woefully scandalized by the methods of... more...

Chapter I. — OF SCHLESIEN, OR SILESIA. Schlesien, what we call Silesia, lies in elliptic shape, spread on the top of Europe, partly girt with mountains, like the crown or crest to that part of the Earth;—highest table-land of Germany or of the Cisalpine Countries; and sending rivers into all the seas. The summit or highest level of it is in the southwest; longest diameter is from northwest to... more...

I THE GATEWAY OF THE GARDEN OF EDEN There is nothing to suggest that you are approaching the gateway of the Garden of Eden when you reach the top of the Persian Gulf, unless the sun be that Flaming Sword which turns every way to keep the way of the Tree of Life. Of cherubim we could see no signs. We lay motionless awaiting orders by wireless. Of the country before us we knew next to nothing. We did not... more...

CHAPTER I. THE SPREAD OF THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES. During the past three centuries the spread of the English-speaking peoples over the world's waste spaces has been not only the most striking feature in the world's history, but also the event of all others most far-reaching in its effects and its importance. The tongue which Bacon feared to use in his writings, lest they should remain... more...

A BORN AND BRED NEW ENGLANDER My great-grandfather was killed in the Revolution; my grandfather fought in the War of 1812; my father sacrificed his health in the Civil War; but I, though born in New England, am the first of my family to emigrate to this country—the United States of America. That sounds like a riddle or a paradox. It isn't; it's a plain statement of fact. As a matter of... more...

I. Failure to recognize that the American, is at heart an idealist is to lack understanding of our national character. Two of our greatest interpreters proclaimed it, Emerson and William James. In a recent address at the Paris Sorbonne on "American Idealism," M. Firmin Roz observed that a people is rarely justly estimated by its contemporaries. The French, he says, have been celebrated chiefly... more...

"To be taken into the American Union is to be adopted into a partnership. To belong as a Crown Colony to the British Empire, as things stand, is no partnership at all. "It is to belong to a power which sacrifices, as it has always sacrificed, the interest of its dependencies to its own. The blood runs freely through every vein and artery of the American body corporate. Every single citizen... more...

Fellow-Citizens of the Senate and House of Representatives: Sixty years have elapsed since the establishment of this Government, and the Congress of the United States again assembles to legislate for an empire of freemen. The predictions of evil prophets, who formerly pretended to foretell the downfall of our institutions, are now remembered only to be derided, and the United States of America at this... more...

BOOK I If this little book reads more like a memoir than a systematic study of conditions, my excuse is that I remained too long in France and was too much with the people whose work most interested me, to be capable, for a long while, at any rate, of writing a detached statistical account of their remarkable work. In the first place, although it was my friend Owen Johnson who suggested this visit to... more...