History & Social Thought

New Work:

Lawson Valentine:
Study for a Biography
by Robert M. Phillips

Lawson Valentine founded the multi-billion dollar company now known as Valspar. Yet, in an age known for robber-barons, he epitomized integrity. Along the way, he founded Houghton Farm, an experimental farm in the Jeffersonian tradition, and became the patron of artist Winsolw Homer. Features woodcuts by Winslow Homer.

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The origins of "unequal pay for harder work" go back further than most students think. This work traces "women's work" and "women's issues" from America's earliest factories (the New England "Mill Girls") to New York City in the ninteenth and early twentieth centuries. Features woodcuts by Winslow Homer.

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A Scientist Looks at Romantic Love and Calls It "Limerence": The Collected Works of Dorothy Tennov

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During 35 years of research, especially since the publication of Love and Limerence, Dr. Tennov received thousands letters that say, “Thank you for letting me know I am not alone, and not crazy.”

The feelings of one caught up in limerence can range from euphoria to misery. Their emotional state rises and falls with the way that the person who is the object of a limerent’s affections (the “LO”) responds … or fails to...(continued below)

At its best, limerence draws people together—to make marriage commitments, build families, propagate the species. Too often, limerence spurs people into regrettable decisions (like running off with a ‘heart-throb’), breaks up families, and shatters hearts.

This eBook on CD is a step toward discovering, “What is this thing called love?” It contains most of Dr. Dorothy Tennov’s mature work. Click here to retrieve a form for easy ordering "RL&L"

Classic Study Series

Sir Winston Churchill:
Selected Writings

Frederick Douglass: Collected Articles

• River War

An Account of the Reconquest of the Sudan  (1902 edition)

The town of Khartoum, at the confluence of the Blue and White Niles, is the point on which the trade of the south must inevitably converge ... Between Khartoum and Assuan the river flows for twelve hundred miles through deserts of surpassing desolation ... It is with events that have occurred in the intervening waste that these pages are concerned.

• The Story of the Malakand Field Force

An Episode of Frontier War

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My Bondage and My Freedom

"Entered according to Act of Congress in 1855..."

The Collected Articles of Frederick Douglass

• My Escape from Slavery

from The Century Illustrated Magazine (Nov. 1881)

• Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave

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Ulysses S. Grant

Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete

Alexander Hamilton

The Federalist Papers

from the Preface: "Man proposes and God disposes."  There are but few important events in the affairs of men brought about by their own choice.

from Chapter II. West Point

In the winter of 1838-9, I ... spent the Christmas holidays at home.  During this vacation my father received a letter from the Honorable Thomas Morris, then United States Senator from Ohio.  When he read it he said to me, Ulysses, I believe you are going to receive the appointment."  "What appointment?"  I inquired.  To West Point; I have applied for it."  "But I won't go," I said.  He said he thought I would...

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After an unequivocal experience of the inefficacy of the subsisting federal government, you are called upon to deliberate on a new Constitution for the United States of America. . .comprehending in its consequences nothing less than the existence of the UNION, the safety and welfare of the parts of which it is composed... It seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force... The crisis at which we are arrived may with propriety be regarded as the era in which that decision is to be made; and a wrong election of the part we shall act may . . . be considered as the general misfortune of mankind.

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Recollections and Letters of General Lee

by Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son

Abraham Lincoln

Collected Writings

The first vivid recollection I have of my father is his arrival at Arlington, after his return from the Mexican War..... Although he was so joyous and familiar with us, he was very firm on all proper occasions, ...and exacted the most implicit obedience.  I always knew that it was impossible to disobey my father.  I felt it in me, I never thought why, but was perfectly sure when he gave an order that it had to be obeyed. 

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Immediately after Lincoln's re-election, in an off-hand speech, ... he spoke as follows:

"It has long been a grave question whether any government not too strong for the liberties of its people can be strong enough to maintain its existence in great emergencies.  On this point, the present rebellion brought our republic to a severe test ... Human nature will not change ...  Let us therefore study the incidents in this as philosophy to learn wisdom from and none of them as wrongs to be avenged....

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Homo Summetros discusses the continuing evolution of mankind -- (and if the author is right, you may not recognize your great-great-grandchildren).

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Literature

Bosnian Fever
by T.F. Barun

T.F. Barun was an attorney in a leading Bosnian ministry. One morning, they took away his law book and handed him a rifle.

This is the novel that he wrote when he returned.

It's taut...  It's chilling. It will make you glad that you were never there.
(Publisher's Note: This novel is a work of fiction. Much of what you will read here, however, typifies events that really happened. Names, dates, and places have been changed to protect the truly innocent -- and perhaps the author -- from those who merely claim to be.)

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(Note: The Bosnian Fever sample page is blocked to younger readers by SafeSurf.)

Ambrose Bierce, Himself

("Josh Billings")

• What Every Woman Knows
• The Admirable Crichton
• Alice Sit-By-The-Fire
• Auld Licht Idyls
• Dear Brutus
• Echoes of the War
• The Little White Bird (including Peter Pan)
• Margaret Ogilvy

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• Can Such Things Be?
• The Devil's Dictionary
• Fantastic Fables
• The Crimson Candle
• Fiends Delight
• Heiress from Redhorse
• An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
. . [became Twilight Zone's #1 rated episode]
• Present at a Hanging
• A Son of the Gods and A Horseman in the Sky

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Songs of
William Blake

Rupert Brooke - Poems

[1887-1915]

Songs of Innocence and of Experience and The Book of Thel

"Little Lamb, who make thee..."
"Tiger, tiger, burning bright..."

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"Rupert Brooke was both fair to see and winning in his ways.  There was at the first contact both bloom and charm; and most of all there was life. . . . vitality ... surprise mingled with delight – "One after one, like tasting a sweet food."  This is life's "first fine rapture".  . . . He [is] the "Great Lover" . . . [showing us] vignettes of sense, keen, momentary, ecstatic with the morning dip of youth in the wonderful stream. . . . " --from Introduction

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Robert Burns -
A Man's A Poet
for A' That

Lord Byron
[George Gordon]

This volume includes --

• The Letters of Robert Burns

"You shall write whatever comes first,– what you see, what you read, what you hear..."

• Poems and Songs

"The best-laid schemes o' mice an ' men
Gang aft agley"

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Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean–roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
Man marks the earth with ruin – his control
Stops with the shore...

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Geoffrey Chaucer

Samuel Taylor Coleridge's
Rimes & Remains

Canterbury Tales and Other Poems

When that Aprilis, with his showers swoot,
The drought of March hath pierced to the root,
And bathed every vein in such licour...

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• Selected Poems

.     It is an ancient Mariner,
  And he stoppeth one of three...

• The Literary Remains
of Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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Dante Alighieri

(1265-1321)

Walter de la Mare

Collected Works

The Divine Comedy (2 Translations)

or, Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise

• Translantion by The Rev. H. F. Cary , A.M.
• Translation by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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This volume includes --

• The Return
• Peacock Pie

Slowly, silently, now the moon
Walks the night in her silver shoon...

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T. S. Eliot

Talking of Michelangelo

The
Homer
Collection

This volume includes --

• Poems
• Prufrock – & Other Observations
• The Waste Land

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• The Iliad
• The Odyssey – Three Translations

Version I. - Butcher  & Lang
Version II. - Samuel Butler
Version III. - Alexander Pope

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by Hedy Kolborg

When Hedy Kolborg began writing, Victoria was the recent queen, and Tennyson the current lord. Her meter may not sound like the 21st century, but her message does, and her "hook" is timeless.

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D.H. Lawrence

[David Herbert Lawrence]

Selected Novels

Vachel Lindsay

(1879-1931)

Trading Rhymes for Bread

• Sons and Lovers
• Women in Love

'I was hoping now for a man to come along,' Gudrun said, suddenly catching her underlip between her teeth, and making a strange grimace, half sly smiling, half anguish. Ursula was afraid.

'So you have come home, expecting him here?' she laughed.

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This volume includes --

• General William Booth Enters into Heaven & Other Poems
• The Congo & Other Poems

[Bass drum beaten loudly.]
Booth led boldly with his big bass drum  –
(Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?) ...

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Sophocles

Shakespeare, William

The Oedipus Trilogy

• Oedipus the King
• Oedipus At Colonus
• Antigone

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The (Reasonably) Complete Shakespeare

Consisting of virtually all of his Sonnets and
35 plays (from the First Folio)

.
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Philosophy

(Including Philosophy, Religion and the Philosophy of Religion, Religion Ethics, Social Usages, Etiquette, & what Aristotle might call “Political Thought”)

Aristotle Collection

• The Categories
• Ethics
• A Treatise on Government

–Introduction by J. A. SMITH, 1908-31

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The New Atlantis appeared in 1627, the year after the author's death.  It seems to have been written about 1623, during the period of literary activity which followed Bacon's political fall.  It lays out his plan for an ideal commonwealth.

We sailed from Peru, ... for China and Japan, ... taking with us victuals for twelve months... But then again there arose strong and great winds ... which carried us up (for all that we could do) towards the north, . . . So that finding ourselves, in the midst of the greatest wilderness of waters in the world, without victuals, we gave ourselves for lost men and prepared for death. 

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The Cicero Collection
(Marcus Tullius Ciceronis)

Confucius

The Chinese Classics (Confucian Analects)

• Cicero's Orations [in Latin]
• Brutus or History of Famous Orators
• Treatises on Friendship and Old Age

You have often urged me to write something on Friendship, and I quite acknowledged that the subject seemed one worth everybody's investigation...

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Book I. Hsio R.

      Chapter I. 1. The Master said, 'Is it not pleasant to learn with a constant perseverance and application?
      2. 'Is it not delightful to have friends coming from distant quarters?'
      3. 'Is he not a man of complete virtue, who feels no discomposure though men may take no note of him?' . . .

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John Dewey

Democracy and Education

1.  The most notable distinction between living and inanimate things is that the former maintain themselves by renewal  ...  While the living thing may easily be crushed by superior force, it none the less tries to turn the energies which act upon it into means of its own further existence.  If it cannot do so, it ... loses its identity as a living thing.

As long as it endures, it struggles to use surrounding energies in its own behalf ...  As long as it is growing, the energy it expends in thus turning the environment to account is more than compensated for by the return it gets: it grows ...  It may be said that a living being is one that subjugates and controls for its own continued activity the energies that would otherwise use it up.  Life is a self-renewing process...

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Ralph Waldo Emerson

The American Essayist

David Hume

The David Hume Collection

• A Treatise of Human Nature
• An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
• Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
• An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals
• The History of England, Volume I
• Two Treatises of Government
• An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volumes I & II (4 books)

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• Essays, 1st Series
• Essays, 2nd Series

The writings of this noted 4th Century Christian mystic, scholar, and saint ... collected for the first time on a single CD. Like all GR.AM.P.S. CD's, this edition provides search and annotation features to aid scholarship.

The CD includes an original recording by the Choir of St. Joseph's Abbey

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