Audiobooks online: genre "Essays & Short Works", page 15

Mark Twain pulls no punches while exposing the "real" Percy Shelley in this scathing condemnation of Edward Dowden's "Life of Shelley". Even though, as Twain writes, "Shelley's life has the one indelible blot upon it, but is otherwise worshipfully noble and beautiful", Twain show...

Gilbert Keith Chesterton was among the world's most prolific writers who incorporated relentless logic, wonderful humor, and a clear view of truth into an amazing tool for exposing the foolishness of the policies of the world around him through the device of paradox....

Twenty short nonfiction works in the public domain. "The Regulation of Time" and "Uniform Standard Time" are two of several readings which touch on social regulation, societal norms, and individual expression. Others examine dancing mania ("Choreomania"); gender conformity ("A Mo...

A collection of short nonfiction works in the public domain. The selections included in this collection were independently chosen by the readers, and the topics encompass history, travel, embroidery, science, mathematics, humor, philosophy, poliltics, and nature. (summary by ...

This is another of the popular books that Lafcadio Hearn wrote on various Japanese subjects. The first part "Stories From Strange Books" is a collection of Japanese tales about ghosts and strange occurrences. In the second part "Japanese Studies", Hearn discourses on cicadae, gir...

Eighteen short nonfiction works in the public domain, independently chosen by the readers. Topics include astronomy, religion, United States history, football, child raising, Tokyo firebombing, and more. (summary by Sue Anderson)...

Twenty short nonfiction works chosen by the readers. "Why Women Should Vote" (Jane Addams, 1910) is one of several selections devoted to women's interests, as are Martha Foote Crow's "The Young Woman on the Farm" (1910), Alice Freeman Palmer's "Three Rules for Happiness," and Myr...

A collection of wry looks at literature, education, and other social phenomena by Canadian humourist and economics professor, Stephen Leacock. (Summary by TriciaG) ...

A collection of sometimes biting, always clever commentaries on some of life's foibles -- as apt today as when Ms. Repplier wrote them in 1912. Though less know to modern readers, Repplier was in her prime ranked among the likes of Willa Cather. Note: Section 13 contains the word...

American novelist Edith Wharton was living in Paris when World War I broke out in 1914. She obtained permission to visit sites behind the lines, including hospitals, ravaged villages, and trenches. Fighting France records her travels along the front in 1914 and 1915, and cel...

This account by Trotsky is of the events in Russia from the October Revolution of 1917 in Petrograd, to his signing of the Brest-Litovsk treaty with Germany on 3rd March 1918 which took Russia out of the First World War. The treaty exacted heavy losses for Russia in terms of a...

Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and William Dean Howells were friends for 44 years. Their personal and professional relationship is considered by many to be one of the most important in American literature. Howells published his famous "My Mark Twain" in the same year Clemens died, 1...