In the town of Titipu, flirting is punishable by death on the command of the Mikado himself! But what happens when the Lord High Executioner is himself condemned to die? And what secret does the wandering minstrel Nanki-Poo hide, that the Mikado and his entire entourage come to witness his execution? "The Mikado" premiered in 1885, when it broke all records for the longest-running musical. It remains arguably the most popular of the Gilbert & Sullivan operettas. Occasionally described as "English ladies with knitting needles in their hair", Gilbert disguised his criticism of British politics by the Japanese setting...

"The Princess Elizabeth of England was born at Greenwich, between three and four of the afternoon of September 7, 1533. Her birth was a matter of small rejoicing to her parents, who were sorely disappointed that their first-born was not a boy." So begins this short, but stirring biography by the British historian, Mandell Creighton, of the magnificent last monarch of the Tudor dynasty. We see Elizabeth in constant peril during the turbulent and ineffectual reigns of Edward VI and Mary. At her accession, her country is little better than an appendage of the Spanish state...

The genius of May Sinclair lies in her brilliant bridging of the Victorian and the modern eras, in her determination never to become ossified in an outdated way of thought or of Art. Though a generation older than the famous literati of the postwar era, she clearly perceived what was worth saving of the old and what was worth embracing of the new. This is clear, of course, in her remarkable fiction, particularly in the astonishing “Life and Death of Harriet Frean,” “Mary Olivier,” and “Tree of Heaven,” in which she broke new ground in psychological and stream-of-consciousness fiction...

The fourth and final volume of Lea's monumental work on the Spanish Inquisition. This volume discusses how the Inquisition dealt with mysticism, solicitation of illicit relationships, bigamy, theological propositions, witchcraft and sorcery, political activity, and almost every other facet of daily life. It concludes with an overarching history of the Inquisition and retrospective.

Anne Stuart , Queen of England, Scotland, and Ireland, succeeded William III to the throne in 1702. She was the daughter of the deposed Catholic king, James II, but was of the Anglican faith. Liberal, Irish member of Parliament, Justin McCarthy, writing in 1902, creates in sparkling, uncluttered prose a panoramic canvas of Anne and her times. In the first of the two volumes, the brilliant commander, the Duke of Marlborough, defeats the French and Bavarians at the Battle of Blenheim, while the flagship of the admiral of the fleet, Sir Cloudesley Shovell, strikes the rocks near the Isles of Scilly and is lost with all eight hundred hands...

The celebration of the Tercentenary of the Authorized Version of the English Bible of 1611 has called into existence the little book here presented to the reader's notice. It is the brief repetition of a story beginning in 670 A.D. and reaching on for twelve hundred years to 1879. It takes us back to the Monastery of Whitby where Caedmon the monk paraphrased Scripture story in Saxon song, and brings us through the centuries to the Abbey of Westminster where a distinguished body of English scholars met in 1870 and commenced that Revision of the Scriptures which first saw the light in 1881.

A series of letters on the early occupation of the colony, the Aborigines, etc addressed by Victorian pioneers to his Excellency Charles Joseph La Trobe Esq. , Lieutenant-Governor of the Colony of Victoria in response to a circular letter sent by him to a number of early settlers dated 29th July 1853. - It cannot be claimed for these papers that they are infallible records of our early history at every point. , The last section ends with lists of Aboriginal words and phrases as were collected by a lady...

"Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio" or "Strange Tales of Liaozhai" is a collection of nearly five hundred mostly supernatural tales written by Pu Songling during the early Qing Dynasty. It was written in Classical Chinese rather than Vernacular Chinese. Pu is believed to have completed the majority of the tales sometime in 1679, though he could have added entries as late as 1707. He borrows from a folk tradition of oral storytelling to put to paper a series of captivating, colorful stories, where the boundary between reality and the odd or fantastic is blurred...

Subtitled, "A Cyclopaedia of the condition and earnings of those that will work, those that cannot work, and those that will not work." "The history of a people from the lips of the people themselves .. their labour, earnings, trials and sufferings, in their own unvarnished language, and to pourtray the condition of their homes and their families by personal observation of the places ..." "My earnest hope is that the book may serve to give the rich a more intimate knowledge of the sufferings, and the frequent heroism under those sufferings, of the poor ...

This volume is a fascinating reflection on the Civil War years from a perspective in 1908, when many Civil War veterans were still alive, when the wounds to North and South were still fresh, and when no event more cataclysmic had struck the Republic than a Civil War that began less than 100 years after the Revolution for Independence. Poets in this volume include: John Greenleaf Whittier, William Cullen Bryant, Herman Melville, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Bret Harte, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Walt Whitman, and Julia Ward Howe. - Summary by Ed Humpal

The Constitution is the charter of government and the supreme law of the United States of America. It was signed by delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on September 17, 1787. The first 10 amendments, known as the Bill of Rights, were ratified together in 1791. Amendments 11 through 27 were ratified separately from 1795 through 1992.

This book is a popular science book written in the late 1600s. It is written as a series of conversations between a gallant philosopher and a countess, while walking in her garden and gazing at the stars. The philosopher explains the heliocentric model of the solar system and also muses on the possibility of extraterrestrial life. While it explains the heliocentric model, unlike other astronomy works of the time, it did not attract the attention of the Church.

The story concerns the contemplated sale of a famous painting by a proud but relatively cash-strapped British aristocrat to a wealthy American art collector who is bent on buying up treasured masterpieces from the Old World, and the patriotic outcry after the public gets wind of his intent. The matter is further complicated by the strong resistance put up by his younger daughter and her blunt-spoken, art critic friend against the sale. - Summary by shih-ping

Immanuel Kant gave a series of lectures on anthropology 1772-1773, 1795-1796 at the University of Königsberg, which was founded in 1544. His lectures dealt with recognizing the internal and external in man, cognition, sensuousness, the five senses, as well as the soul and the mind. They were gathered together and published in 1798 and then published in English in The Journal of Speculative Philosophy in 1867, volumes 9-16. Therefore, several texts will be used for this book. I was able to find sections 1-37 and then section 43, and sections 47-57...

A History of the politics surrounding The Union of Norway with Sweden, from 1814-1905, from the Norwegian perspective - Summary by Ærik Bjørnsson

A detailed and exhaustive history of the Norwegian People, written in two volumes. The author, Knut Gjerset, was born in Western Norway in 1865 and immigrated to Chippewa County, Minnesota, in the US with his parents in 1871 and his brother Oluf later got elected to public office there. He received a B.A. in Literature from the University of Minnesota, and also studied at John's Hopkins University from 1895-1896, and the University of Heidelberg, where he was awarded a PhD, from 1896-1898. This first...

The Philosophical Studies from The Human Comedy are a series of works that are intended as a reflection on history in part through the use of fiction. 'Catherine de Medici' is one such 'study', and features, alongside detailed history sections, elements of the 'story' are fictionalised. In particular, this happens through dialogue that describes the feelings of the characters and what they are doing, these parts in the manner of a novel. In particular, Catherine de Medici , was depicted by historians as a bad ruler...

Anne Stuart , Queen of England, Scotland, and Ireland, succeeded William III to the throne in 1702. She was the daughter of the deposed Catholic king, James II, but was of the Anglican faith. Liberal, Irish member of Parliament, Justin McCarthy, writing in 1902, creates in sparkling, uncluttered prose a panoramic canvas of Anne and her times. In the second of the two volumes, McCarthy describes the Battle of Malplaquet, where Marlborough meets the French in "a contest of hand-to-hand fighting on a gigantic scale...

"England Since Waterloo" by Sir John Arthur Ransome Marriott was first published in 1913 and went through many editions. The author taught history at Worcester College, Oxford for thirty-six years and served as a Conservative member of Parliament for fifteen. "England Since Waterloo" begins with the defeat of Napoleon who, Marriott writes, was impotent "to assail English power at sea, foiled in his attempt to ruin her commerce...overwhelmed under Russian snows, and finally conquered by the genius of Wellington...

The History of the Reformation in the Sixteenth Century, by Jean-Henri Merle d’Aubigné, is a classic work on the great events that re-opened the Christian gospel to a needy world. It tells of how the twenty-year-old Martin Luther, browsing through books in the library at the University of Erfurt, takes down from the shelf a particular volume that has caught his interest. He has never seen anything like it. It is a Bible! He is astonished to find in this volume so much more than the fragments of gospels and epistles that were selected for public reading in churches...

This collection of the 195 known, publicly-printed speeches of Mark Twain was compiled by Paul Fatout and published by the University of Iowa Press. The speeches are in the Public Domain, and our thanks go to the University of Iowa for making them available for this Public Domain audio recording. They were compiled in the University of Iowa Press book entitled "Mark Twain Speaking" and are arranged, chronologically, from Twain's first authenticated public speech in 1864, to his last speech, exactly 7 months before he died. Extensive analysis , notes, appendix and index are included in the printed work. - Summary by John Greenman

The title says it all. World War I narratives of German activities in Belgium after the German invasion of this neutral country. - Summary by david wales

Internet Archive, which hosts our audio books, is in the midst of their annual fund-raising. They have also begun a drive to provide a mirror site in Canada to ensure IA's availability to all users. The IA is a vast library with millions of public domain books, audio, film, radio, and other media. They also maintain an open library of copyrighted books one can 'check out' by becoming a member with a virtual library card. This collection is devoted to the concept of why we need a public library, the title taken from an essay by Chalmers Hadley, which will be the first entry in this audio book...

A 1973 U.S. government publication describing the history and physical characteristics of this Arizona national monument within the boundaries of the Navajo Nation. - Summary by david wales

"Welcome to all! We show the story of how, nearly three hundred years ago, when this country was not so happy as it is now, some people driven by persecution out of England went on a long and dangerous voyage in a ship called the Mayflower, and made for themselves a home across the Atlantic Ocean." Cast List: Stage Directions read by MaryAnnMaster William Brewster: SpiderScientistMaster William Bradford: ToddHWMaster John Carver: aravagarwalMaster John Alden: JamesMcAndrewMaster John Robinson: Alex...

A lively picture of the origin and completion of the Suez Canal and his architect, Vicomte de Lesseps. This is the translation of a lecture given before the Societe de Gens Lettres in Paris, in April 1870 by de Lesseps himself.

Quote: "In the following pages I have told the story of that body of adventurers who, from 1822 to 1829, opened the way for the expansion of our nation beyond the Missouri. I have made Jedediah Smith the central figure of my story, for of all explorers of the Great West he was in many ways the most remarkable, though, heretofore, our school children have not even heard his name. In order to give the student a sense of the continuity of history, I have begun my narrative with a brief account of the...

Louis Pasteur famously said, "In the fields of observation chance favors only the prepared mind." Pasteur brought to the study of chemistry, microbiology, and applied immunology, a mind open, innovative, and insightful. Born of peasant stock in the French Jura, he worked with dogged determination all his life and often in the face of strenuous opposition. Through an unbroken succession of rigorously designed and meticulously performed experiments, Pasteur developed veterinary vaccines and halted grievous losses in the French wine, silk, and dairy industries...

These two publications put out by the U.S. government are about the Trinity site in New Mexico where in 1945 the first atomic bomb was tested. Each publication complements the other, though there is some duplication. These are descriptions of the test itself and of the planning and organization leading up to the test. They also tell what was done with the site after the test and how it became a national historic landmark. - Summary by david wales

The Golden Book of Springfield is American poet Vachel Lindsay's strange and mystical odyssey through the Springfield, Illinois of 2018, where the residents of that city strive to turn their home into a democratic utopia. It is a "Springfield a hundred years hence," a dreamlike space of spiritual and social awakenings. But when the threat of international war begins to loom over the horizon, the citizens of Springfield must find new ways to protect their city and keep it a "practical City of God...

Étienne de La Boétie was the closest friend of Michel de Montaigne and the subject of the latter's famous essay "On Friendship." Here, however, he tackles a different, more impersonal relationship: that of ruler and ruled. The argument in this work is encapsulated in this quote: "A people enslaves itself, cuts its own throat, when, having a choice between being vassals and being free men, it deserts its liberties and takes on the yoke, gives consent to its own misery, or, rather, apparently welcomes it...

In 1903, Panama became a brand new state in Central America by seceding from Colombia in order to facilitate the construction of the Panama Canal, which was finished in 1914. This fledgling nation was home to the oldest inhabited European settlement on the American continent, a rich indigenous culture, and a splendid natural beauty from coast to jungle. Such was the scene as found by George A. Miller as he was "Prowling about Panama" in 1919, an activity that is more a "getting lost in the right way" than systematic exploration. Follow the author on his prowls through an amazing country that at the time of writing was an exciting mixture of tradition and modernity. .