The Broken Vase and Other Stories;for Children and Youth,Compiled by a Teacher

American writer Edith Wharton is known for her novels of manners set in old New York; yet much of her adult life was spent in France. She lived in Paris throughout World War I and was heavily involved in refugee work. Her 1918 novella The Marne dramatizes the events of the war as seen through the eyes of 15-year-old Troy Belknap, an American boy who longs to join up and save his beloved France.

This is a bilingual project. The first part, in Hebrew, is the story "Injustice" by Yosef Haim Brenner, written following the conquest of Palestine by the British troops during WWI. The story takes place on the Turkish side of the dividing line between the combating forces. An escaped British prisoner of war had taken shelter among a group of Jewish workers, who, following a heated discussion, turned him over to the Turkish army. The second part of this project, in English, is a chapter in the book "The Escaping Club," written in 1922 by the same British prisoner of war, the aviator A. J. Evans, who gave his account of the same event.

Phoebe Yates Pember served as a matron in the Confederate Chimborazo military hospital in Richmond, Virginia, during the Civil War, overseeing a dietary kitchen serving meals to 300 or more wounded soldiers daily. Reminiscences of a Southern Hospital is her vivid recounting of hospital life and of her tribulations (and personal growth) as a female administrator. To follow her from day one, when she is greeted with “ill-repressed disgust” that “one of them had come,” and she, herself, “could...

The New York Times, CURRENT HISTORY, A Monthly Magazine, THE EUROPEAN WAR, VOLUME IIAPRIL, 1915 Germany's War Zone and Neutral Flags The German Decree and Interchange of Notes Answering American Protests to Germany and Britain BERLIN, Feb. 4, (by wireless to Sayville, L.I.)--The German Admiralty today issued the following communication: The waters around Great Britain and Ireland, including the whole English Channel, are declared a war zone on and after Feb. 18, 1915. Every enemy merchant ship found in this war zone will be destroyed, even if it is impossible to avert dangers which threaten the crew and passengers...

Johnny Reb & Billy Yank is an epic novel first published in 1905 by Alexander Hunter, a soldier who served in Confederate General Robert E. Lee's Army from 1861 to 1865. The novel is noted for encapsulating most of the major events of the American Civil War, due to Hunter's obvious involvement in them. The "novel" is actually pulled from Hunter's own diaries during the war. He explains his reasons for publishing his accounts in the preface to the novel- "There were thousands of soldiers on both sides during the Civil War, who, at the beginning, started to keep a diary of daily events, but those who kept a record from start to finish can be counted on the fingers of one hand...

Explorer Hiram Bingham discovered Machu Picchu in 1911, as recounted in his book Inca Lands, now released on Librivox at http://librivox.org/inca-lands-by-hiram-bingham/. In 1917, he became an aviator and organized the United States Schools of Military Aeronautics at eight universities to provide ground school training for aviation cadets, and then in Issoudun, France, Bingham commanded the primary Air Service flying school. He became a supporter of the Air Service in their post-war quest for independence from the Army and supported that effort, in part, with the publication of this book of his wartime experiences published in 1920 by Yale University Press.

”War and Peace” is a panoramic novel: It is its own justification, and perhaps needs no introduction. It always reminds the translator of a broad and mighty river flowing onward with all the majesty of Fate. On its surface, float swiftly by logs and stumps, cakes of ice, perhaps drowned cattle or men from regions far above. These floating straws, insignificant in themselves, tell the current. Once embark upon it, and it is impossible to escape the onward force that moves you so relentlessly. What landscapes you pass through, what populous towns, what gruesome defiles, what rapids, what cataracts! The water may be turbid, or it may flow translucent and pure, – but still it rushes on...

Published in 1866, Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War is a collection of poems about the Civil War by Herman Melville. Many of the poems are inspired by second- and third-hand accounts from print news sources (especially the Rebellion Record) and from family and friends. A handful of trips Melville took before, during, and after the war provide additional angles of vision into the battles, the personalities, and the moods of war. In an opening note, Melville describes his project not so much as a systematic chronicle (though many of the individual poems refer to specific events) but as a kind of memory piece of national experience...

"Dodo Wonders" is the third and last of the "Dodo" novels by E.F. Benson, author of the "Mapp and Lucia" series as well as numerous stand-alone novels and short stories. Dodo was rumored to be based on Lady Margot Asquith; when questioned about it, Lady Asquith reportedly replied that Benson had taken nothing from her for the character of Dodo "except her drawing-room." "Dodo Wonders" takes Benson's characters, the glittering socialite Lady Dodo Chesterford, her husband, and friends into World War I-era England...

Joan of Arc is a folk heroine of France and a Roman Catholic saint. Claiming divine guidance, she led the French army to several important victories during the Hundred Years' War, which paved the way for the coronation of Charles VII of France. Captured by her enemies, she was sold to the English and put on trial for charges of "insubordination and heterodoxy". She was burned at the stake for heresy when she was 19 years old. Twenty-five years after her execution, an inquisitorial court examined the trial, pronounced her innocent, and declared her a martyr...

This work has grown out of the desire frequently expressed to the writer when he has been lecturing on the American Revolution, that in some way the experiences of the people as well as the deeds of the armies in that trying period might be presented to the present generation. The author has given to the public this narrative, in which the course of the armies in the various campaigns is followed and, at the same time, many of the forgotten or ignored experiences and deeds of the common people are also incorporated.

A true war narrative, published in 1918 while WWI was still going on.

Elizabeth Custer has penned an engaging portrait of 1870’s life on a U.S. cavalry post in the Dakotas, just before her husband and his troops met their tragic deaths in the Battle of the Little Big Horn. “Our life,” she writes, “was often as separate from the rest of the world as if we had been living on an island in the ocean.” Her portrait of her husband, General George Armstrong Custer is laudatory—his intellect, his love of dogs (he kept a hunting pack of 40 at the post); but, Boots and Saddles is more than just a memorial...

William Winwood Reade (1838 - 1875) was a British historian, explorer, and philosopher. His most famous work, the Martyrdom of Man (1872)—whose summary running head reads "From Nebula to Nation"—is a secular, "universal" history of the Western world. Structurally, it is divided into four "chapters" of approximately 150 pages each: the first chapter, "War", discusses the imprisonment of men's bodies, the second, "Religion", that of their minds, the third, "Liberty", is the closest thing to a...

The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government (1881) is written by Jefferson Davis, former President of the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War. Davis wrote the book as a straightforward history of the Confederate States of America and as an apologia for the causes that he believed led to and justified the American Civil War. (Intro modified from Wikipedia) "The most painful pages of this work are those which . . . present the subjugation of the State governments by the Government of the United States...

"The Sword of Deborah" contains the reflections of a woman journalist visiting women working behind the lines in France during World War I. She writes: "I was glad to have seen all the different convoys I had, because no two had been to me alike, and to each I am indebted for a differing expression of the same vision, which is the vision splendid of a duty undertaken gladly and sustained with courage. From my first convoys -- the Fannies and the G.S.V.A.D.'s -- I got the wonderful facts of it, at the V...

Stories of World War I warfare, published in 1916 in the midst of the war. (That's why names of persons and units are literally "blanked" out.) Alec John Dawson (1872 - 1951), generally known as A. J. Dawson (pseudonyms Major Dawson, Howard Kerr, Nicholas Freydon) was an English author, traveller and novelist. During World War I he attained the rank of Major, and was awarded the MBE and Croix de Guerre in recognition of his work as a military propagandist, a work the listener may want to keep in mind...

Henry Wirz (November 25, 1823 – November 10, 1865) was the only Confederate soldier tried after the end of the American Civi War. He was tried, convicted, and executed, not for being a Confederate soldier, but for conspiracy and murder relating to his command of Camp Sumter, the infamous Confederate prisoner-of-war prison at Andersonville, Georgia. Wirz encouraged and commanded barbaric and murderous policies and actions in the prison. This Librivox recording is excerpts from the 850 page summary of the trial written by the Army Judge Advocate (prosecutor) for, and at the command of, The Congressional House Of Representatives, 40th Congress, Second Session, Ex, Doc...

Sevastopol Sketches (Russian: Севастопольские рассказы, Sevastopolskiye rasskazy) are three short stories written by Leo Tolstoy and published in 1855 to record his experiences during the Siege of Sevastopol (1854–1855) in the Crimean War (1853-1856). The name originates from Sevastopol, a city in Crimea. The book has also been released under the anglicized title The Sebastopol Sketches and is sometimes titled Sevastopol Stories. These brief "sketches" formed the basis of many of the episodes in Tolstoy's magnum opus, War and Peace...

“… this war was not one of mere destruction. It set men to thinking as they had never thought before. It intensified their inventive faculties, and as a result, the world is richer in many ways. Lessons of thrift and economy have been taught us. Manufacturers have learned the value of standardization. The business man has gained an appreciation of scientific research. The whole story is too big to be contained within the covers of a single book, but I have selected the more important and interesting inventions and have endeavored to describe them in simple language for the benefit of the reader who is not technically trained...

Another remarkable World War I novel by Romer Wilson, "If All These Young Men" is a character study of a group of young 20-something friends in England dealing with the looming, grey presence of the War in their lives. The story begins on Good Friday 1918, and centers on Josephine Miller, a restless, strong-minded young woman who cannot tolerate trivialities or frivolities so long as the War goes on, and who agonizes over how to go on living in its shadow. The characters of Josephine and her friends...

The “Nurse and Spy” is simply a record of events which have transpired in the experience and under the observation of one who has been on the field and participated in numerous battles—among which are the first and second Bull Run, Williamsburg, Fair Oaks, the Seven days in front of Richmond, Antietam, and Fredericksburg—serving in the capacity of “Spy” and as “Field Nurse” for over two years.While in the “Secret Service” as a “Spy,” which is one of the most hazardous positions in the army—she penetrated the enemy’s lines, in various disguises, no less than eleven times; always with complete success and without detection...

This Librivox reading consists of selections from depositions in a lawsuit brought after the end of the American Civil War by some businessmen of the former Confederacy. This reading focuses on the sworn statements of General William Tecumseh Sherman who commanded the Carolinas campaign and General Oliver O. Howard who was one of Sherman’s subordinate commanders. The subject is the still-controversial burning of Columbia, capital of South Carolina, toward the end of the Civil War. “Official Depositions of Wm, Tecumseh Sherman, “General of the Army of the United States,” and Gen...

[Kipling] became involved in the debate over the British response to the rise in German naval power known as the Tirpitz Plan to build a fleet to challenge the Royal Navy, publishing a series of articles in 1898 which were collected as A Fleet in Being. And as always with Kipling there is that wonderful sardonic humor and attention to the lower orders of being.

This little gem of a book contains twelve poems about World War I. There is more to it than its intrinsic value as verse. Edward Elgar (1857-1934) set three of the poems (The Fourth Of August, To Women, For The Fallen) in his cantata The Spirit of England (1915-1917). Since its composing and musical setting, For The Fallen has held an honored place in every November 11th Remembrance Day for Britain and the Commonwealth (Memorial Day for Americans). Moved by the opening of the Great War and the...

Siegfried Sassoon was one of the first to write poetry about the brutal reality of war, based on his real-life experiences in the trenches. He served in World War I on the Western Front and was awarded the Military Cross for bravery under fire. However, he later became a convicted pacifist, threw his Military Cross into the Mersey river, and continued to write and publish poems and political statements against the war. His poems capture the despair he felt towards the war overall, and he paints vivid word pictures that make the reader "pray you'll never know, the hell where youth and laughter go"...

After having written and released an initial draft of this proclamation in September of 1862, minor changes were made and Lincoln signed it on January 1st, 1863. It declared free the slaves in 10 states not then under Union control, with exemptions specified for areas already under Union control in two states. Lincoln spent the next 100 days preparing the army and the nation for emancipation, while Democrats rallied their voters in the 1862 off-year elections by warning of the threat freed slaves posed to northern whites...

“A COLLECTION OF absolutely authentic accounts by privates and non-commissioned officers.... We see a great simplicity and directness of observation and recital, so admirable that one page of such writing is worth all the folios of the war experts and correspondents, not to say romancers and publicists.” The Athenæum. “THE HUMAN SIDE, the naked horror and simple glory of actual conflict, is what Mr. Wood’s soldiers are concerned with, and the stories they tell give a clearer picture of this side of war than can be found in any other form...

Twenty-six stories of pre-World War I British naval life in war and peace.

Letters from a Brisbane doctor posted to the Western Front from 1914 to December 1915. He tells anecdotes of World War I including stories of "de-lousing" an entire regiment, the precise arrangements of the urine trenches and his eyewitness accounts of the battles of Neuve Chapelle and Ypres and a contemporary comment on the Gallipoli campaign. He describes how the enemy rains shells on the ambulances and the retrievals of the wounded from the trenches at night. This was also a time of great medical...

The Great War is over and the soldier boys are back home, but some of them just can't settle down again. Neither can the girls who helped out both on the foreign and the home front. Dr. Ward notices, but doesn't know how to help until one Sunday after his sermon, when something happens to change the lives of many in their town.

An eye-witness account of the so-called Flagstaff War, fought between Maori warriors, led by Hone Heke, and British troops between March 1845 and January 1846 in and around the Bay of Islands. Ostensibly triggered by the cutting down of the flagstaff above Kororareka (now Russell), Heke's attack on the town was a consequence of festering grievances following the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi and annexation of New Zealand by the British Crown in 1840. The Reverend Robert Burrows had charge of the mission station and school at Waimate, inland from the Bay of Islands...

The Angel of the Revolution: A Tale of the Coming Terror (1893) is a science fiction novel by English writer George Griffith. It was his first published novel and remains his most famous work. It was first published in Pearson's Weekly and was prompted by the success of The Great War of 1892 in Black and White magazine, which was itself inspired by The Battle of Dorking. A lurid mix of Jules Verne's futuristic air warfare fantasies, the utopian visions of News from Nowhere and the future war invasion literature of Chesney and his imitators, it tells the tale of a group of terrorists who conquer the world through airship warfare...

I am inclined to rank Count Tolstoy not among the realists or naturalists, but rather as an impressionist. He is often careless about accuracy. Numberless incongruities can be pointed out. He is as willing to adopt an anachronism as a medieval painter. I would defy an historian to reconstruct the battle of Austerlitz from Count Tolstoy's description. And yet what a picture of a battle was ever more vivid! It is like a painting where the general impression is true, but a close analysis discovers...

Lively narratives of some of the great siege battles of war. The book was written before World War I, in 1908. Some of the narratives contain language which was common in 19th and early twentieth century usage but which listeners today may find offensive.

An amusing but deeply poignant story, “The Last Ditch” describes the wartime experiences of a British aristocratic family who gradually realize that their old feudal perquisites are passing away in the trenches of the Great War and that unprecedented new forces are pushing out the comfortable old ways. Lady Arles is the matriarch determined to resist to her last breath. Her bohemian young daughter Venice is set on a career as a poet and even dallies with a Socialist lover, but in some ways is the family member who seems the most helpless without her old aristocratic privileges...

Wherever their ships took them, the Normans (Northman) were ruthless conquerors but gifted governors. These eight lectures, given in Boston in 1915 by the eminent Harvard medievalist, Charles Homer Haskins, chronicle the achievements of these descendants of the Vikings, whose genius for assimilation transformed them into French, English, and Sicilian citizens of well-run states. Haskins discusses the great William the Conqueror and Henry II, the impetuous Richard the Lion-Hearted, and the hapless King John. The Normans founded the Kingdom of Sicily in which there was religious toleration and a Saracen bureaucracy, and left us a moving picture of themselves in the Bayeux Tapestry.

This is Part Three of the incredible story of the actions of the men and women of the Canadian Expeditionary Force, Canada's contribution to the Great War 1914-1919, during the last 100 days of the First World War.After nearly 4 years of stalemate (trench warfare) the Allied Forces planned to break through the German Hindenburg Line and then push the enemy from their defensive positions.You will follow the CEF as they take Amiens (Part One), Arras (Part Two), Cambrai (Part Three) and then the pursuit of the German Forces from Valenciennes to Mons (Part Four) in Belgium, the same place where the war began on August 4, 1914 on November 11, 1918.

This is Part Four of the incredible story of the actions of the men and women of the Canadian Expeditionary Force, Canada's contribution to the Great War 1914-1919, during the last 100 days of the First World War.After nearly 4 years of stalemate (trench warfare) the Allied Forces planned to break through the German Hindenburg Line and then push the enemy from their defensive positions.You will follow the CEF as they take Amiens (Part I), Arras (Part II), Cambrai (Part III) and then the pursuit of the German Forces from Valenciennes to Mons (Part IV) in Belgium, the same place where the war began on August 4, 1914 on November 11, 1918...

François-Dominique Toussaint L’Ouverture (1743-1803) rose to fame in 1791 during the Haitian struggle for independence. In this revolt, he led thousands of slaves on the island of Hispañola to fight against the colonial European powers of France, Spain and England. The former slaves ultimately established the independent state of Haiti and expelled the Europeans. L’Ouverture eventually became the governor and Commander-In-Chief of Haiti before recognizing and submitting to French rule in 1801...

Perhaps the most famous work on the philosophy of war, and the effective use of military force, by a European author.

The author of this 1917 narrative, who escaped from Germany and military service after 14 months of fighting in France, did not wish to have his name made public, fearing reprisals against his relatives. The vivid description of the life of a common German soldier during “The Great War” aroused much interest when it was published in the United States in serial form. Here was a warrior against his will, a hater of militarism for whom there was no romance in war, but only butchery and brutality, grime and vermin, inhuman toil and degradation...

Eleven stories of war by the author of The Red Badge of Courage. Stephen Crane was an American author. He is recognized by modern critics as one of the most innovative writers of his generation. Crane's writing is characterized by vivid intensity, distinctive dialects, and irony. Common themes involve fear, spiritual crises and social isolation. His writing made a deep impression on 20th-century writers, most prominent among them Ernest Hemingway, and is thought to have inspired the Modernists and the Imagists.

The Power-House is a novel by John Buchan, a thriller set in London, England. It was written in 1913, when it was serialised in Blackwood's Magazine, and it was published in book form in 1916. The narrator is the barrister and Tory MP Edward Leithen, who features in a number of Buchan's novels. The urban setting contrasts with that of its sequel, John Macnab, which is set in the Scottish Highlands. The Power-House of the title is an international anarchist organization led by a rich Englishman named Andrew Lumley...

John L. Ransom was the quartermaster of Company A, 9th Michigan Volunteer Cavalry during the American Civil War and a Union prisoner in the infamous Confederate prison at Andersonville, Georgia. This is his diary which he published some few years after the end of the Civil War. Note that in pages 193 through 301 are included 1) List of the Dead and 2) Recapitulation of Deaths By States; both of these sections are omitted from this Librivox reading. The Andersonville National Historic Site, located near Andersonville, Georgia, preserves the former Camp Sumter (also known as Andersonville Prison), a Confederate prisoner-of-war camp during the American Civil War…...

Flora Sandes was the only British woman officially to serve as a soldier in World War I. Initially a St. John Ambulance volunteer, she traveled to Serbia, where, in the confusion of war, she was formally enrolled in the Serbian army. While the Serbian Army was regrouping in Corfu, Ms. Sandes returned to England to recuperate and publish these memoirs.

"But it is not for those who heard the call in the later months so much as in memory of those early heroes of Mons, who knew the bitterness of a valiant retreat, the horror of forced marches along parched roads, with only the prod of the next man's bayonet to keep him awake, and only a flap cut from the tail of his shirt between the pitiless sun and the dreaded delirium that would leave him a prey to the Huns' barbarities; in memory of these it is that I take up the pen to run the gauntlet of a thousand critical eyes on a way fraught with difficulties." ~ Kate John Finzi

During the war (WWI), [Kipling] wrote a booklet The Fringes of the Fleet containing essays and poems on various nautical subjects of the war. Some of the poems were set to music by English composer Edward Elgar.

Theodore Roosevelt's personal account of The Rough Riders, the name affectionately bestowed on the 1st United States Volunteer Cavalry, one of three such regiments raised in 1898 for the Spanish-American War and the only one to see action. Roosevelt, serving first as Lt. Colonel and 2nd in command, gives a rousing depiction of the men and horses, equipment, talent, their trip to Cuba, battle strategies, losses, injuries and victories. He says: "In all the world there could be no better material for soldiers than that afforded by these grim hunters of the mountains, these wild rough riders of the plains ...

In 1917, the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) arrived in Europe to fight alongside the French and British allied forces. American journalist Heywood Broun followed the AEF and reported on their experiences. He published these sketches in book form in 1918. This project is part of the ongoing commemoration by Librivox volunteers of the centenary of World War I.

A biography of Jesse James as told by his son, Jesse James, Jr. We are treated to inside tales of Jesse's childhood and home life; what drove him to become a Confederate guerrilla during the Civil War; his life after the war and how he became a wanted man. Since it was written by his son, it is a little biased and we are not told anything about any crimes Jesse and his gang committed. Some of the stories of Jesse's war adventures are a little hard to believe, but a good read nonetheless.

Mairi Chisholm and Elsie Knocker were two British nurses and ambulance drivers whose staggeringly heroic efforts during World War I saved countless lives and earned them life-long honor. They were especially known for their determination to treat wounded soldiers on the front lines instead of transporting them at great risk to "safer" hospital facilities, even though many of their actions went directly contrary to official bureaucratic regulations. In November of 1914, they took the step for which they are most famous...

The eyes of the Légionnaire, now grown accustomed to the glow of the light, made sure that the figure had not moved, nor was aware of his silent and furtive approach. Two plans of action suggested themselves, one to move behind the foliage to the right and intercept the monk with the lantern should he attempt to flee toward the lights of the house nearby, the other to risk all in a frank statement, a plea for charity and asylum. (A selection from Chapter 1. )

Justin McCarthy (1830-1912), liberal member of Parliament and historian. He brings the great 18th Century personalities to life: Walpole and Swift, Bolingbroke and Mary Wortley Montagu, the Old Pretender, Bonnie Prince Charlie, and the four King Georges. This second volume brings us the terrible death of Queen Caroline, Swift and Stella, the Jacobite rising of 1745, the Wesleyan Movement, Clive's victories, and the struggle for Canada.

Four-Fifty Miles to Freedom is the true but little known story of the escape of eight British Prisoners-of-War from a Turkish POW camp during the First World War. The story, written by two of the escapees, describes their life in the various POW camps in Turkey in which they were moved around, and then their well-planned and executed escape from the camp at Yozgad. They were then faced with a trek of over three hundred miles across arid deserts, and a mountain range, constantly searching for water, all the while attempting to avoid detection by soldiers and the local population...

A study of the black patriots of the American Revolution, with introductions by Harriet Beecher Stowe and Wendell Phillips.

Recognizing the importance of establishing for history an authentic text of the Trial of major German WWII war criminals, the International Military Tribunal, consisting of members from Great Britain, the USA, Russia, and France, directed the publication of the Record of the Trial. This volume contains basic, official, pre-trial documents together with the Tribunal’s judgment and sentence of the defendants.

This second volume of the biography of Lord Cochrane deals with his fall from grace, imprisonment for debt, loss of honours, and attempts to clear his name. It has had a marked influence on naval fiction, most obviously on some of the novels by Patrick O'Brian. - Summary by Timothy Ferguson

A crack American flying troop has been sent to France, where they await further instructions. They are concerned that their extensive talents will not be put to good use in the war. Major Cowan introduces Lt. McGee as the British instructor for the crew. It turns out the Brit is actually an American, born in the U.S., even though his parents were British. McGee and Larkin are flying partners. Out on a mission, McGee spots a small enemy plane in a searchlight, probably intent on dropping flares to mark targets for bombers...