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  The Cenci - Celebrated Crimes...

  Alexandre Dumas

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  To paraphrase the note from the translator, The Celebrated Crimes of Alexandre Dumas père was not written for children. The novelist has spared no language—has minced no words—to describe violent scenes of violent times. In particular, the torture of Beatrice Cenci at the hands of the authorities of Rome is given in brutal and clinical detail, sparing nothing.In this, the second of the series, Dumas tells the frankly horrifying story of the tragic sons and daughers of Francesco Cenci. More beast than man in Dumas' portrait, Francesco hated them all with extraordinary cruelty and exploited them all diabolically; in particular, he sexually exploited his two daughters, especially Beatrice, both at the same time and often in the same bed as his wife Lucrezia (no relation to the famouse Borgia princess of the same name.) When, finally, his family turned on him and had him murdered, it looked for a while as though they might get away with it, but their fortunes were not that fortunate. The authorities, from Pope Clement VI on down, took bloody and terrible vengeance upon them. In what is arguably the first battered-woman defence, the crimes of the father meant nothing; the crimes of the women, everything.Never one to allow a mere fact to stand in the way of a good story, Dumas seems to restrain himself more than usual here, though he does occasionally portray a scene from the point of view of the proverbial fly on the wall. Again, as the translator notes, "The careful, mature reader, for whom the books are intended, will recognize, and allow for, this fact." We're reading Dumas here, not Tuchman or Toynbee.Enjoy!

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  Barclay's Investigated for...

  PBS NewsHour

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  In a scandal that triggered a CEO resignation, an investigation and basic questions about the integrity of the financial system, British bank Barclays paid $450 million in fines last week to settle accusations that it helped rig the Libor rate. Margaret Warner discusses the fallout with David Enrich of the Wall Street Journal.

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  The Daughters of George III -...

  Catherine Curzon

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  An in-depth look into the lives of the six daughters of King George III of England. 
   
  In the dying years of the 18th century, the corridors of Windsor echoed to the footsteps of six princesses. They were Charlotte, Augusta, Elizabeth, Mary, Sophia, and Amelia, the daughters of King George III and Queen Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. Though more than fifteen years divided the births of the eldest sister from the youngest, these princesses all shared a longing for escape. Faced with their father’s illness and their mother’s dominance, for all but one a life away from the seclusion of the royal household seemed like an unobtainable dream. 
   
  The six daughters of George III were raised to be young ladies and each in her time was one of the most eligible women in the world. Tutored in the arts of royal womanhood, they were trained from infancy in the skills vital to a regal wife but as the king’s illness ravaged him, husbands and opportunities slipped away. 
   
  Yet even in isolation, the lives of the princesses were filled with incident. From secret romances to dashing equerries, rumors of pregnancy, clandestine marriage and even a run-in with Napoleon, each princess was the leading lady in her own story, whether tragic or inspirational. In The Daughters of GeorgeIII, take a wander through the hallways of the royal palaces, where the king’s endless ravings echo deep into the night and his daughters strive to be recognized not just as princesses, but as women too. 
   
  Praise for The Daughters of George III 
   
  “This fascinating look at the lives and times of the six daughters of George III and Queen Charlotte delivers an engaging read for enthusiasts of the royals and British history.” —Library Journal

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  Last Man Out - Surviving the...

  H. Robert Charles

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  An American Marine recounts his ordeal as a World War II POW forced by the Japanese to build the railway immortalized in The Bridge on the River Kwai. 
   
  From June 1942 to October 1943, more than 100,000 Allied POWs who had been forced into slave labor by the Japanese died building the infamous Burma-Thailand Death Railway, an undertaking immortalized in the film The Bridge on the River Kwai. One of the few who survived was American Marine H. Robert Charles, who describes the ordeal in vivid and harrowing detail in Last Man Out. The story mixes the unimaginable brutality of the camps with the inspiring courage of the men, such as a Dutch Colonial Army doctor whose skill and knowledge of the medicinal value of wild jungle herbs saved the lives of hundreds of his fellow POWs, including the author. 
   
  Praise for Last Man Out 
   
  “A remarkable story, long overdue, of the treatment of POW’s captured by Japan.” —Arthur L. Maher, USN, Senior officer to survive sinking of the USS Houston, POW of the Japanese in World War II 
   
  “In World War II, to move materials and troops from Japan to Burma by avoiding the perilous sea route around the Malay Peninsula, the Japanese military built a railroad through the jungles of Thailand and Burma at great human cost to its prisoner laborers. Last Man Out is an effective addition to the history of this tragedy.” —Library Journal

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  Autobiography of Goethe Volume 2

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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  A literary celebrity by the age of 25, Goethe was ennobled by the Duke of Saxe-Weimar, Carl August in 1782 after first taking up residence there in November 1775 following the success of his first novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther. He was an early participant in the Sturm und Drang literary movement. During his first ten years in Weimar, Goethe served as a member of the Duke's privy council, sat on the war and highway commissions, oversaw the reopening of silver mines in nearby Ilmenau, and implemented a series of administrative reforms at the University of Jena.Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) wrote his autobiography between the years 1811 and 1833. It covered the years from his youth until he was going to leave Weimar after the completion of his first book, The Sorrows of Young Werther. The Librivox recording of Volume 1 includes books one through ten. This second volume includes books ten through thirteen. Johann Goethe was an interesting individual. Here is a sample of Goethe's observations.We (Goethe and Herder) had not lived together long in this manner when he confided to me that he meant to be competitor for the prize which was offered at Berlin, for the best treatise on the origin of language. His work was already nearly completed, and, as he wrote a very neat hand, he could soon communicate to me, in parts, a legible manuscript. I had never reflected on such subjects, for I was yet too deeply involved in the midst of things to have thought about their beginning and end. The question, too, seemed to me in some measure and idle one; for if God had created man as man, language was just as innate in him as walking erect; he must have just as well perceived that he could sing with his throat, and modify the tones in various ways with tongue, palate, and lips, as he must have remarked that he could walk and take hold of things. If man was of divine origin, so was also language itself: and if man, considered in the circle of nature was a natural being, language was likewise natural. These two things, like soul and body, I could never separate.Silberschlag, with a realism crude yet somewhat fantastically devised, had declared himself for the divine origin, that is, that God had played the schoolmaster to the first men. Herder’s treatise went to show that man as man could and must have attained to language by his own powers. I read the treatise with much pleasure, and it was of special aid in strengthening my mind; only I did not stand high enough either in knowledge or thought to form a solid judgment upon it. But one was received just like the other; there was scolding and blaming, whether one agreed with him conditionally or unconditionally. The fat surgeon (Lobstein) had less patience than I; he humorously declined the communication of this prize-essay, and affirmed that he was not prepared to meditate on such abstract topics. He urged us in preference to a game of ombre, which we commonly played together in the evening. P. 349-350 (Wikipedia and Craig Campbell)

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  Chester Alan Arthur - The...

  Zachary Karabell

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  Chester Alan Arthur never dreamed that one day he would be president of the United States. A successful lawyer, Arthur had been forced out as the head of the Custom House of the Port of New York in 1877 in a power struggle between the two wings of the Republican Party. He became such a celebrity that he was nominated for vice president in 1880—despite his never having run for office before.Elected alongside James A. Garfield, Arthur found his life transformed just four months into his term, when an assassin shot and killed Garfield, catapulting Arthur into the presidency. The assassin was a deranged man who thought he deserved a federal job through the increasingly corrupt "spoils system." To the surprise of many, Arthur, a longtime beneficiary of that system, saw that the time had come for reform. His opportunity came in the winter of 1882–83, when he pushed through the Pendleton Act, which created a professional civil service and set America on a course toward greater reforms in the decades to come.Chester Arthur may be largely forgotten today, but Zachary Karabell eloquently shows how this unexpected president—of whom so little was expected—rose to the occasion when fate placed him in the White House.

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