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The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - The Original Classic Edition

Equiano Olaudah

The Interesting Narrative (1789) is one of the earliest slave narratives, a genre that includes classics such as Uncle Toms Cabin (1852), Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845) and neo-slave narratives like Alex Haleys Roots (1976), Toni Morrisons Beloved (1987) and Edward P. Jones The Known World (2003). What makes Olaudah Equianos account unique is that is was the first slave narrative to find a wide audience, and it is not hard to understand why – not only is it a good story, but it is very well written, almost literary – it sold so well it was a cornerstone in bringing about public sympathy and support for the abolition of the slavery in England. <p> Just about everything we know about Olaudah Equiano is from his autobiography. He was born around 1745 in Africa, kidnapped and enslaved at the age of 10 or 11 and shipped across the Middle Passage to the West Indies, and soon after to a Virginia plantation (he was too small to work the sugar cane fields). From there he had the good fortune to be purchased by the captain of a British warship, where he learned English manners, language and customs – and a promise of freedom. But, in one of the great blows of his life, he was tricked and sold back into slavery in the West Indies, where he worked on merchant ships for a number of years, finally able to save enough money (trading fruits and rum between ports of call) to buy his freedom in his early 20s. He then spent years as a freed man working on merchant and military ships traveling extensively around the Atlantic, including a trip to the Arctic. His close calls with death were many, including disease, shipwrecks and run-ins with whites who would beat him to within an inch of his life. Equiano eventually settled down in England, married a white girl, had two children and died a wealthy and respected gentleman, a remarkable achievement for a former African slave in the 18th century. <p> _The Interesting Narrative_ can be read on multiple levels. It is a fascinating first-hand document of 18th century British mercantilism, showing the Atlantic Golden Triangle in action. It is a story of Christian redemption – by following the teachings of the Bible, and those who transgress against it, Equiano explains why things turn out how they do. It is one of the great works of travel literature; exotic locales and death-defying adventures fill the pages. It is a powerful expose of 18th century slavery, unflinchingly detailing the institutionalized horrors and how both victim and victimizer are turned into animals. It is a call for action to end the slave trade. <p> In the end, we read books like this today with a certain amount of curious detachment, it has been about 150 years since slavery ended – or has it? Some 27 million slaves – more than twice the number of people taken from Africa during the entire 350 year history of the Africa slave trade – today toil in rich and poor countries around the world. Most Americans probably know more about slavery as it once existed, than as it is currently being practiced in their own time, directly touched by the cheap goods we purchase. Reading Equianos account we cant help but be moved against slavery, all slavery, historical or contemporary, and for that the book has immortal value.

The Book of Life - The Original Classic Edition

Sinclair Upton

Upton Sinclair, one of Americas foremost and most prolific authors, addresses the cultivation of the mind and the body in this 1922 volume. Sinclairs goal was to attempt to tell the reader how to live, how to find health, happiness and success, and how to develop fully both the mind and the body. Part One: The Book of the Mind covers such subjects as faith, reason, morality, and the subconscious. Part Two: The Book of the Body develops such subjects as errors in diet, the fasting cure, food and poisons, work and play, and diseases and their cures.

A Little Book of Filipino Riddles - The Original Classic Edition

Starr Frederick

Riddles are common to all mankind. They delighted the old Aryans and the ancient Greeks as they do the modern Hindu and the Bantu peoples of darkest Africa. Many writers have defined the riddle. Friedreich in his Geschichte des Räthsels, says: ?The riddle is an indirect presentation of an unknown object, in order that the ingenuity of the hearer or reader may be exercised in finding it out.... Wolf has given the following definition: the riddle is a play of wit, which endeavors to so present an object, by stating its characteristic features and peculiarities, as to adequately call it before the mind, without, however, actually naming it.? <p> If you want a bunch of fun and entertaining riddles to share with children and grownups, this is your book! Highly recommended if you want to see your loved ones giggle, smile and laugh.

Marvels of Scientific Invention - The Original Classic Edition

Corbin Thomas

Marvels Of Scientific Invention is An Intriguing Account In Non-Technical Language Of The Invention Of Guns, Torpedoes, Submarines Mines, Up-To-Date Smelting, Freezing, Colour Photography, And Many Other Discoveries Of Science in the 19th Century. <p> Contents: Digging With Dynamite, Measuring Electricity, The Fuel Of The Future, Some Valuable Electrical Processes, Machine-Made Cold, Scientific Inventions At Sea, The Gyro-Compass, Torpedoes And Submarine Mines, Gold Recovery, Intense Heat, An Artificial Coal Mine, The Most Striking Invention Of Recent Times, How Pictures Can Be Sent By Wire, A Wonderful Example Of Science And Skill, Scientific Testing And Measuring, Colour Photography, How Science Aids The Stricken Collier, How Science Helps To Keep Us Well, Modern Artillery

She - The Original Classic Edition

Haggard H

Nineteenth Century fantasy at its best – While studying at Cambridge, Ludwig Horace Holly receives a very strange visit from a long-time friend. In failing health, this friend gives Holly charge of his 5 year-old son Leo, and a mysterious chest, which he is charged not to open until the boys twenty-fifth birthday. <p> Twenty years later, the boy has grown to handsome manhood, and the chest is opened to reveal a family history stretching back some 23 centuries to ancient Egypt. Interestingly, included is the familys attempts to get revenge on an immortal white women who rules a tribe in Africa. <p> The young man, Leo, becomes fascinated with the tale, and draws Holly onto an adventure to Africa. Passing through danger upon danger, the companions finally find themselves in the hands of She-who-must-be-obeyed. <p> While the story is somewhat dated by modern standards, it is very well written and more riveting than the above introduction may suggest. If nothing else, this book is an excellent example of Nineteenth Century fantasy literature.

Etiquette - The Original Classic Edition

Post Emily

This book is an essential read for almost everyone, period. If you go outside your house, open your curtains, answer your phone, or even reply to your mail, electronic or otherwise, this book is for you. If you want a primer on manners because you feel like youre not doing the right thing in a social situation, this book is for you. The only reason you shouldnt have this book is if you have so little contact with other people that you would not even be on the internet reading this review in the first place. <p> When most people imagine whats inside a book like this, they see detailed instructions on how many inches the dinner fork must be from the salad fork, how many seconds one is required to wait before answering the phone, and how many inches of shoelace should hang off the side of ones sneakers. Emily Posts Etiquette is nothing like that. She emphasizes that changing times have put the heart of good manners where they belong: In the spirit of courtesy and respect for others. <p> What you should get from this book by reading it is the confidence to deal with lifes difficult situations, and the grace to be polite even when others are not. What everyone else should get from this book is a little bit better world, where at least one more person can lead with a good example. <p> These potential benefits alone are enough to merit this books recommendation. I encourage you to pick up a copy and find out for yourself just how much you can get from it.

The Norwegian Fairy Book - The Original Classic Edition

Stroebe Clara

These Norwegian tales of elemental mountain, forest and sea spirits, handed down by hinds and huntsmen, woodchoppers and fisherfolk, men who led a hard and lonely life amid primitive surroundings are, perhaps, among the most fascinating the Scandinavian countries have to offer. <p> Nor are they only meant to delight the child, though this they cannot fail to do. ?Grown-ups? also, who take pleasure in a good story, well told, will enjoy the original ?Peer Gynt? legend, as it existed before Ibsen gave it more symbolic meanings; and that glowing, beautiful picture of an Avalon of the Northern seas shown in ?The Island of Udröst.? <p> What could be more human and moving than the tragic ?The Player on the Jew?s-Harp,? or more genuinely entertaining than ?The King?s Hares?? ?The Master-Girl? is a Candida of fairy-land, and the thrill and glamor of black magic and mystery run through such stories as ?The Secret Church,? ?The Comrade,? and ?Lucky Andrew.? In ?The Honest Four-Shilling Piece? we have the adventures of a Norse Dick Whittington. <p> ?Storm Magic? is one of the most thrilling sea tales, bar none, ever written, and every story included in the volume seems to bring with it the breath of the Norse mountains or the tang of the spindrift on[vi] Northern seas. Much of the charm of the stories lies in the directness and simplicity of their telling; and this quality, which adds so much to their appeal, the translator has endeavored to preserve in its integrity. <p> He cannot but feel that ?The Norwegian Fairy Book? has an appeal for one and all, since it is a book in which the mirror of fairy-tale reflects human yearnings and aspirations, human loves, ambitions and disillusionments, in an imaginatively glamored, yet not distorted form. <p> It is his hope and belief that those who may come to know it will derive as much pleasure from its reading as it gave him to put it into English.

The Memoirs Of Jacques Casanova De Seingalt, Spanish Passions - The Original Classic Edition

Casanova Giacomo

A series of adventures wilder and more fantastic than the wildest of romances, written down with the exactitude of a business diary; a view of men and cities from Naples to Berlin, from Madrid and London to Constantinople and St. Petersburg; the vie intime of the eighteenth century depicted by a man, who to-day sat with cardinals and saluted crowned heads, and to morrow lurked in dens of profligacy and crime; a book of confessions penned without reticence and without penitence; a record of forty years of occult charlatanism; a collection of tales of successful imposture, of bonnes fortunes, of marvellous escapes, of transcendent audacity, told with the humour of Smollett and the delicate wit of Voltaire. Who is there interested in men and letters, and in the life of the past, who would not cry, Where can such a book as this be found? <p> Yet the above catalogue is but a brief outline, a bare and meagre summary, of the book known as THE MEMOIRS OF CASANOVA; a work absolutely unique in literature. He who opens these wonderful pages is as one who sits in a theatre and looks across the gloom, not on a stage-play, but on another and a vanished world. The curtain draws up, and suddenly years are rolled away, and in bright light stands out before us the whole life of the past; the gay dresses, the polished wit, the careless morals, and all the revel and dancing of those merry years before the mighty deluge of the Revolution. The palaces and marble stairs of old Venice are no longer desolate, but thronged with scarlet-robed senators, prisoners with the doom of the Ten upon their heads cross the Bridge of Sighs, at dead of night the nun slips out of the convent gate to the dark canal where a gondola is waiting, we assist at the parties fines of cardinals, and we see the bank made at faro. Venice gives place to the assembly rooms of Mrs. Cornely and the fast taverns of the London of 1760; we pass from Versailles to the Winter Palace of St. Petersburg in the days of Catherine, from the policy of the Great Frederick to the lewd mirth of strolling-players, and the presence-chamber of the Vatican is succeeded by an intrigue in a garret. It is indeed a new experience to read this history of a man who, refraining from nothing, has concealed nothing. The friend of popes and kings and noblemen, and of all the male and female ruffians and vagabonds of Europe, abbe, soldier, charlatan, gamester, financier, diplomatist, viveur, philosopher, virtuoso, chemist, fiddler, and buffoon, each of these, and all of these was Giacomo Casanova, Chevalier de Seingalt, Knight of the Golden Spur. <p> And not only are the Memoirs a literary curiosity; they are almost equally curious from a bibliographical point of view. The manuscript was written in French and came into the possession of the publisher Brockhaus, of Leipzig, who had it translated into German, and printed. From this German edition, M. Aubert de Vitry re-translated the work into French, but omitted about a fourth of the matter, and this mutilated and worthless version is frequently purchased by unwary bibliophiles. In the year 1826, however, Brockhaus, in order presumably to protect his property, printed the entire text of the original MS. in French, for the first time, and in this complete form, containing a large number of anecdotes and incidents not to be found in the spurious version, the work was not acceptable to the authorities, and was consequently rigorously suppressed. Only a few copies sent out for presentation or for review are known to have escaped, and from one of these rare copies the present translation has been made and solely for private circulation. <p> In conclusion, both translator and editeur have done their utmost to present the English Casanova in a dress worthy of the wonderful and witty original.