Description Black Hawk, so named after the sacred medicine bag he carried with him, was a warrior and a leader of a tribe of Sauk Native Americans in the American Midwest circa 1800. He rose to leadership during a tumultuous time for his people, as they were pressed on all sides by the warlike British, the ruthlessly expansionist Americans, and the grudges and jealousies of neighboring tribes. He lived as a warrior for much of his early life, when the War of 1812 between the British and the
Description The Song of the Lark, Willa Cather’s third novel, was written in 1915. It is said to have been inspired by the real-life soprano Olive Fremstad, a celebrated Swedish-American singer who, like the protagonist, was active in New York and Europe during the time period depicted in the novel. The work explores how an artist’s early life influences their work. In the novel, Thea Kronborg discovers her talent as a singer, and goes on to achieve great fame and success once she leaves her
Description Christopher Marlowe wrote The Jew of Malta at the height of his career, and it remained popular until England’s theaters were closed by Parliament in 1642. Many have critiqued it for its portrayal of Elizabethan antisemitism, but others argue that Marlowe criticizes Judaism, Islam, and Christianity equally for their hypocrisy. This antisemitism debate continues on to Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, which was written about ten years later and which some consider to be directly
Description Willa Cather’s O Pioneers! was first published in June of 1913 by Houghton Mifflin to high praise. Cather was immensely proud of the work and considered it her first “true” novel, having discovered her own form and subject. Told in five parts, O Pioneers! follows the Bergsons, a family of Swedish-American immigrants farming the prairie of Nebraska at the turn of the 20th century. After the death of her father, heroine Alexandra Bergson inherits the family farm, using her insight to
Description Two decades after Jules Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon and Around the Moon, the Baltimore Gun Club returns with its sights on the North Pole’s rich coal deposits. Access to the area would be facilitated under a more temperate climate, which, the team believes, can be achieved by slightly altering the Earth’s axis of rotation. This climate change would affect every region of the globe to various degrees, thus creating anxiety and opposition worldwide. Sans Dessus Dessous, number
Description The Conquest of Bread is a political treatise written by the anarcho-communist philosopher Peter Kropotkin. Written after a split between anarchists and Marxists at the First International (a 19th-century association of left-wing radicals), The Conquest of Bread advocates a path to a communist society distinct from Marx and Engels’s Communist Manifesto , rooted in the principles of mutual aid and voluntary cooperation. Since its original publication in 1892, The Conquest of Bread
Description P. G. Wodehouse was an incredibly prolific writer who sold short stories to publications around the world throughout his career. The settings of his stories range from the casinos of Monte Carlo to the dance halls of New York, often taking detours into rural English life, where we follow his wide variety of distinctive characters and their trials, tribulations and follies. The stories in this volume consist of most of what is available in U.S. public domain, with the exception of
Description After the bloody battle at Tewksbury and the second dethroning of Henry VI, England and its citizens are finally able to enjoy peace under the reign of Edward IV. The remaining Lancastrian leaders are either killed or scattered to the four winds. Within the kingdom, not everyone is happy with their new king—and when Edward falls ill, his power-hungry brother Richard, the Duke of Gloucester, sees his chance and prepares to kill anyone who stands between him and the throne. Richard
Description The first three acts of Molière’s Tartuffe were first performed for Louis XIV in 1664, but the play was almost immediately suppressed—not because the King disliked it, but because the church resented the insinuation that the pious were frauds. After several different versions were written and performed privately, Tartuffe was eventually published in its final five-act form in 1669. A comic tale of man taken in by a sanctimonious scoundrel, the characters of Tartuffe, Elmire, and
Description Spargo, reporter extraordinaire for the Watchman, stumbles over a murdered man in London’s Middle Temple Lane, and, based on a journalistic hunch, decides to investigate. As the circle of interest widens, strange connections start to emerge; connections that lead towards an unsuspected conspiracy of twenty years before. The Middle Temple Murder is one of the prolific J. S. Fletcher’s most popular works. It builds on his earlier short story “The Contents of the Coffin,” and was
Description Black Hawk, so named after the sacred medicine bag he carried with him, was a warrior and a leader of a tribe of Sauk Native Americans in the American Midwest circa 1800. He rose to leadership during a tumultuous time for his people, as they were pressed on all sides by the warlike British, the ruthlessly expansionist Americans, and the grudges and jealousies of neighboring tribes. He lived as a warrior for much of his early life, when the War of 1812 between the British and the
Description The Song of the Lark, Willa Cather’s third novel, was written in 1915. It is said to have been inspired by the real-life soprano Olive Fremstad, a celebrated Swedish-American singer who, like the protagonist, was active in New York and Europe during the time period depicted in the novel. The work explores how an artist’s early life influences their work. In the novel, Thea Kronborg discovers her talent as a singer, and goes on to achieve great fame and success once she leaves her
Description Christopher Marlowe wrote The Jew of Malta at the height of his career, and it remained popular until England’s theaters were closed by Parliament in 1642. Many have critiqued it for its portrayal of Elizabethan antisemitism, but others argue that Marlowe criticizes Judaism, Islam, and Christianity equally for their hypocrisy. This antisemitism debate continues on to Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, which was written about ten years later and which some consider to be directly
Description Willa Cather’s O Pioneers! was first published in June of 1913 by Houghton Mifflin to high praise. Cather was immensely proud of the work and considered it her first “true” novel, having discovered her own form and subject. Told in five parts, O Pioneers! follows the Bergsons, a family of Swedish-American immigrants farming the prairie of Nebraska at the turn of the 20th century. After the death of her father, heroine Alexandra Bergson inherits the family farm, using her insight to
Description Two decades after Jules Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon and Around the Moon, the Baltimore Gun Club returns with its sights on the North Pole’s rich coal deposits. Access to the area would be facilitated under a more temperate climate, which, the team believes, can be achieved by slightly altering the Earth’s axis of rotation. This climate change would affect every region of the globe to various degrees, thus creating anxiety and opposition worldwide. Sans Dessus Dessous, number
Description The Conquest of Bread is a political treatise written by the anarcho-communist philosopher Peter Kropotkin. Written after a split between anarchists and Marxists at the First International (a 19th-century association of left-wing radicals), The Conquest of Bread advocates a path to a communist society distinct from Marx and Engels’s Communist Manifesto , rooted in the principles of mutual aid and voluntary cooperation. Since its original publication in 1892, The Conquest of Bread
Description P. G. Wodehouse was an incredibly prolific writer who sold short stories to publications around the world throughout his career. The settings of his stories range from the casinos of Monte Carlo to the dance halls of New York, often taking detours into rural English life, where we follow his wide variety of distinctive characters and their trials, tribulations and follies. The stories in this volume consist of most of what is available in U.S. public domain, with the exception of
Description After the bloody battle at Tewksbury and the second dethroning of Henry VI, England and its citizens are finally able to enjoy peace under the reign of Edward IV. The remaining Lancastrian leaders are either killed or scattered to the four winds. Within the kingdom, not everyone is happy with their new king—and when Edward falls ill, his power-hungry brother Richard, the Duke of Gloucester, sees his chance and prepares to kill anyone who stands between him and the throne. Richard
Description The first three acts of Molière’s Tartuffe were first performed for Louis XIV in 1664, but the play was almost immediately suppressed—not because the King disliked it, but because the church resented the insinuation that the pious were frauds. After several different versions were written and performed privately, Tartuffe was eventually published in its final five-act form in 1669. A comic tale of man taken in by a sanctimonious scoundrel, the characters of Tartuffe, Elmire, and
Description Spargo, reporter extraordinaire for the Watchman, stumbles over a murdered man in London’s Middle Temple Lane, and, based on a journalistic hunch, decides to investigate. As the circle of interest widens, strange connections start to emerge; connections that lead towards an unsuspected conspiracy of twenty years before. The Middle Temple Murder is one of the prolific J. S. Fletcher’s most popular works. It builds on his earlier short story “The Contents of the Coffin,” and was