Publisher: GIANLUCA
Letters on the English (or Letters Concerning the English Nation) is a series of 24 essays written by Voltaire based on his experiences living in England between 1726 and 1729.
Former NPR reporter Eric Weiner's new book, Man Seeks God: My Flirtations with the Divine, recounts his voyage around the world to discover more about his own beliefs. During a season that, for many, centers on religion and spirituality, Ray Suarez and Weiner discuss the quest for God and personal faith.Show book
“Durham’s account is modest and straightforward . . . has many lessons for anyone interested in the history of the Old West, leadership or law enforcement.” —American West Review Only an extraordinary Texas Ranger could have cleaned up bandit-plagued Southwest Texas, between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande, in the years following the Civil War. Thousands of raiders on horseback, some of them Anglo-Americans, regularly crossed the river from Mexico to pillage, murder, and rape. Their main objective? To steal cattle, which they herded back across the Rio Grande to sell. Honest citizens found it almost impossible to live in the Nueces Strip. In desperation, the governor of Texas called on an extraordinary man, Captain Leander M. McNelly, to take command of a Ranger company and stop these border bandits. One of McNelly’s recruits for this task was George Durham, a Georgia farm boy in his teens when he joined the “Little McNellys,” as the Captain’s band called themselves. More than half a century later, it was George Durham, the last surviving “McNelly Ranger,” who recounted the exciting tale of taming the Nueces Strip to San Antonio writer Clyde Wantland. In Durham’s account, those long-ago days are brought vividly back to life. Once again the daring McNelly leads his courageous band across Southwest Texas to victories against incredible odds. With a boldness that overcame their dismayingly small number, the McNellys succeeded in bringing law and order to the untamed Nueces Strip—succeeded so well that they antagonized certain “upright” citizens who had been pocketing surreptitious dollars from the bandits’ operations. “The reader seems to smell the acrid gunsmoke and to hear the creak of saddle leather.” —Southwestern Historical QuarterlyShow book
Barbara Kingsolver has entertained and touched the lives of legions of readers with her critically acclaimed and bestselling novels The Bean Trees, Animal Dreams, and Pigs in Heaven.In these twenty-five newly conceived essays, she returns once again to her favored literary terrain to explore the themes of family, community, and the natural world. With the eyes of a scientist and the vision of a poet, Kingsolver writes about notions as diverse as modern motherhood, the history of private property, and the suspended citizenship of humans in the animal kingdom. Her canny pursuit of meaning from an inscrutable world compels us to find instructions for life in surprising places: a museum of atomic bomb relics, a West African voodoo love charm, an iconographic family of paper dolls, the ethics of a wild pig who persistently invades a garden, a battle of wills with a two-year-old, or a troop of oysters who observe high tide in the middle of Illinois.In sharing her thoughts about the urgent business of being alive, kingsolver the essayist employs the same keen eyes, persuasive tongue, and understanding heart that characterize her acclaimed fiction.Show book
In a private, all-male school for seduction...she might just graduate with honors. If she can only maintain her disguise long enough to teach the man of her dreams a few lessons.Show book
At last Orville was free, soaring above the sand dunes, wind in his face. Lying in the glider's wing, he moved his hips in the control cradle and the craft began to turn as planned. But then something went wrong. The glider wanted to go into a spin, and as Orville struggled with the controls, it came to a standstill in midair. When Orville Wright (1871-1948) and his brother Wilbur set out to solve the problem of flight, they recognized that success would come with careful observation, perseverance, and ingenuity. From experiments in their Dayton, Ohio, bicycle shop to test flights over the beaches of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, the amateur aviation enthusiasts risked their lives and worked tirelessly to solve the problems that had stumped the world's best scientists. Together the Wright brothers designed and constructed a power-driven airplane and, in it, made the world's first controlled, sustained flights. As a result, the skies were opened and the era of aviation began. Heroes of History is a unique biography series that brings the shaping of history to life with the remarkable true stories of fascinating men and women who changed the course of history.Show book
Gen. David McMurtrie Gregg (1833–1917) was one of the ablest and most successful commanders of cavalry in any Civil War army. Pennsylvania-born, West Point–educated, and deeply experienced in cavalry operations prior to the conflict, his career personified that of the typical cavalry officer in the mid-nineteenth-century American army. Gregg achieved distinction on many battlefields, ultimately gaining the rank of brevet major general as leader of the Second Division, Cavalry Corps, Army of the Potomac.The highlight of his service occurred on July 3, 1863, the climactic third day at Gettysburg, when he led his own command as well as the brigade of Brig. Gen. George Armstrong Custer in repulsing an attempt by thousands of Confederate cavalries under the legendary J. E. B. Stuart in attacking the right flank and rear of the Union Army while Pickett's charge struck its front and center.Historians credit Gregg with helping preserve the security of his army at a critical point, making Union victory inevitable. Unlike glory-hunters such as Custer and Stuart, Gregg was a quietly competent veteran who never promoted himself or sought personal recognition for his service. Rarely has a military commander of such distinction been denied a biographer's tribute. Gregg's time is long overdue.Show book
