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Men Like Gods (1923) is a novel, referred to by the author as a "scientific fantasy", by English writer H. G. Wells. It features a utopia located in a parallel universe. Men Like Gods is set in the summer of 1921. Its protagonist is Mr. Barnstaple (his first name is either Alfred or William), a journalist working in London and living in Sydenham. He has grown dispirited at a newspaper called The Liberal and resolves to take a holiday. Taking leave of his wife and family, his plans are disrupted when his and two other automobiles are accidentally transported with their passengers into "another world," which the "Earthlings" call Utopia. A sort of advanced Earth, Utopia is some three thousand years ahead of humanity in its development. For the 200,000,000 Utopians who inhabit this world, the "Days of Confusion" are a distant period studied in history books, but their past resembles humanity's in its essentials, differing only in incidental details: their Christ, for example, died on the wheel, not on the cross. Utopia lacks any world government and functions as a successfully realised anarchy. "Our education is our government," a Utopian named Lion says. Sectarian religion, like politics, has died away, and advanced scientific research flourishes. Life in Utopia is governed by "the Five Principles of Liberty", which are privacy, free movement, unlimited knowledge, truthfulness, and free discussion (allowing criticism). Men Like Gods is divided into three books. Details of life in Utopia are given in Books I and III. In Book II, the Earthlings are quarantined on a rocky crag after infections they have brought cause a brief epidemic in Utopia. There they begin to plot the conquest of Utopia, despite Mr. Barnstaple's protests. He betrays them when his fellows try to take two Utopians hostage, forcing Mr. Barnstaple to escape execution for treason by fleeing perilously. In Book III, Mr. Barnstaple longs to stay, but when he asks how he can best serve Utopia, he is told that he can do this "by returning to your own world". Regretfully he accepts and ends his month-long stay in Utopia. But he brings with him back to Earth a renewed determination to contribute to the effort to make a terrestrial Utopia: "He belonged now soul and body to the Revolution, to the Great Revolution that is afoot on Earth; that marches and will never desist nor rest again until old Earth is one city and Utopia set up therein. He knew clearly that this Revolution is life, and that all other living is a trafficking of life with death." Contemporary reviews of the novel were largely positive, though some found the story weakly plotted. As is often the case in his later fiction, Wells's utopian enthusiasm exceeded his interest in scientific romance or fantasy (his own terms for what is now called science fiction). The novel was yet another vehicle for Wells to propagate ideas of a possible better future society, also attempted in several other works, notably in A Modern Utopia (1905). Men Like Gods and other novels like it provoked Aldous Huxley to write Brave New World (1932), a parody and critique of Wellsian utopian ideas. Wells himself later commented on the novel: "It did not horrify or frighten, was not much of a success, and by that time, I had tired of talking in playful parables to a world engaged in destroying itself." (wikipedia.org)

Ivanhoe: A Romance by Walter Scott is a historical novel published in three volumes, in 1819, as one of the Waverley novels. Set in England in the Middle Ages, this novel marked a shift away from Scott's prior practice of setting stories in Scotland and in the more recent past. Ivanhoe became one of Scott's best-known and most influential novels. Set in 12th-century England, with colourful descriptions of a tournament, outlaws, a witch trial, and divisions between Jews and Christians, Normans and Saxons, Ivanhoe was credited by many, including Thomas Carlyle and John Ruskin, with inspiring increased interest in chivalric romance and medievalism. As John Henry Newman put it, Scott "had first turned men's minds in the direction of the Middle Ages". Ivanhoe was also credited with influencing contemporary popular perceptions of historical figures such as King Richard the Lionheart, Prince John, and Robin Hood. Ivanhoe is the story of one of the remaining Anglo-Saxon noble families at a time when the nobility in England was overwhelmingly Norman. It follows the Saxon protagonist, Sir Wilfred of Ivanhoe, who is out of favour with his father for Sir Wilfred's allegiance to the Norman king Richard the Lionheart. The story is set in 1194, after the failure of the Third Crusade, when many of the Crusaders were still returning to their homes in Europe. King Richard, who had been captured by Leopold of Austria on his return journey to England, was believed to still be in captivity. (wikipedia.org)

Children's and Household Tales (German: Kinder- und Hausmärchen) is a collection of German origin fairy tales first published in 1812 by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, the Brothers Grimm. The collection is commonly known today as Grimm's Fairy Tales (German: Grimms Märchen). The influence of the book was widespread. W. H. Auden praised it, during World War II, as one of the founding works of Western culture...

A Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation is a work that was written by St. Thomas More while imprisoned in the Tower of London in 1534. Thomas More was imprisoned by King Henry VIII for refusing to swear to the Act of Succession (1534). He had been given writing materials in the early months of his imprisonment. The Dialogue is set in the Kingdom of Hungary in 1528, between the invasions of Suleiman the Magnificent. It is a fictional dialogue between Vincent and his uncle, Anthony. The book begins with Vincent paying a visit to his uncle. He is terrified by the invasions of the Ottomans and seeks comfort from Anthony. Anthony tells him that comfort can only come from God. The Dialogue is a reflection on worldly power, the transience of pleasure, and the redemptive power of Jesus Christ. While it is a spiritual reflection, the treatment of themes of worldly power by a major political figure and humanist also characterizes it as a work of political thought. Immediately after More's death, the Dialogue of Comfort circulated in manuscript form. The most important surviving manuscripts are the Corpus Christi Manuscript, Bodleian Library, Ms. C.C.C. D.37; and British Library, Ms. Royal 17 D.XIV. It was first published, in quarto, in London by Richard Tottel in 1553. In modern editions, the spelling and punctuation of the original are corrected and standardized. (wikiperdia.org)

Flush: A Biography, an imaginative biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's cocker spaniel, is a cross-genre blend of fiction and nonfiction by Virginia Woolf published in 1933. Written after the completion of her emotionally draining The Waves, the work returned Woolf to the imaginative consideration of English history that she had begun in Orlando: A Biography, and to which she would return in Between the Acts. Commonly read as a modernist consideration of city life seen through the eyes of a dog, Flush serves as a harsh criticism of the supposedly unnatural ways of living in the city. The figure of Elizabeth Barrett Browning in the text is often read as an analogue for other female intellectuals, like Woolf herself, who suffered from illness, feigned or real, as a part of their status as female writers. Most insightful and experimental are Woolf's emotional and philosophical views verbalised in Flush's thoughts. As he spends more time with Barrett Browning, Flush becomes emotionally and spiritually connected to the poet and both begin to understand each other despite their language barriers. For Flush smell is poetry, but for Barrett Browning, poetry is impossible without words. In Flush Woolf examines the barriers that exist between woman and animal created by language yet overcome through symbolic actions. The book, due to its subject matter, has often been considered one of her less serious artistic endeavours; however, she uses her distinctive stream of consciousness style to experiment with a non-human perspective. In places the novella plays with realism by allowing Flush an improbable amount of perception for a canine (Flush seems to grasp some idea of social class in humans, a concept recurrently criticized in the story as he becomes more "democratic" later in life), and can "talk" to other dogs on the street. At other times the reader is forced to interpret events from the dog's limited knowledge (Flush sees her owner agitated over markings on a paper and cannot understand that she is in love). For material, Woolf drew primarily on Barrett Browning's two poems on dogs ("To Flush, My Dog" and "Flush or Faunus") and on the published correspondence of the poet and her husband, Robert Browning. From this material, Woolf creates a biography that works on three levels. It is overtly a biography of a dog's life. Since this dog is of interest primarily for its owner, the work is also an impressionistic biography of Elizabeth Barrett during the most dramatic years of her life. At this level, Flush mostly recapitulates the romantic legend of Barrett Browning's life: early confinement by a mysterious illness and a doting but tyrannical father; a passionate romance with an equally talented poet; an elopement that permanently estranges the father, but which allows Barrett Browning to find happiness and health in Italy. On a third level, the book gives Woolf an opportunity to return to some of her most frequent topics: the glory and misery of London; the Victorian mindset; class differences; and the ways in which women oppressed by "fathers and tyrants" may find freedom. Woolf ostensibly uses the life of a dog as pointed social criticism, ranging across topics from feminism and environmentalism to class conflict. (wikipedia.org)

This is a classic work of Western nonfiction by a Montana artist whose drawings and paintings helped create the iconography of the early cowboy of the open range. Also a storyteller, Russell wrote this collection of yarns and memories before his death, commemorating frontier life in the closing decades of the nineteenth century. It was published in 1927, with an introduction by Will Rogers in the form of a cowboy eulogy. The original edition featured more than 50 of Russell's illustrations, some of them in color. Unlike the fairly rollicking account of Teddy Blue Abbott, his cowboy contemporary, Russell's book is a more melancholy view of what he remembers as the good old days. His stories are told in an ironic vernacular by an old-timer cowboy named Rawhide Rawlins. Many concern the adventures of cowboys; many also feature Native Americans, in the early years of the agencies (reservations), portrayed with some complexity of feelings, ranging from fear and distrust to respect. Some are outrageously tall tales. Some are spirited character sketches, capturing something of life on the rough, raw land before settlement and homesteading, the motorcar, and civilization - before the plow broke the prairie sod where buffalo and then cattle and cowboys ranged freely. One of the finest pieces of Western writing occurs in the last chapter, "Longrope's Last Guard," which describes in vivid detail the experience of riding herd on a pitch dark night as the stillness is shattered by an electrical storm that stampedes the cattle and takes the life of one of the men. The burial of the dead cowboy on the open prairie and the subsequent disappearance of his grave is symbolic of the passing of the brief frontier era Russell's words and pictures embrace. I recommend this book for its capturing of the historical cowboy as remembered by a man who was there and lived among them. As a companion volume, I also recommend Teddy Blue Abbott's "We Pointed Them North," a well-detailed and more light-hearted recollection of the same time and place. (Ron)

CONTENTS Mind over Motor Like a Wolf on The Fold The Simple Lifers Tish's Spy My Country Tish of Thee About the author: Mary Roberts Rinehart (August 12, 1876 - September 22, 1958) was an American writer, often called the American Agatha Christie. Rinehart published her first mystery novel The Circular Staircase in 1908, which introduced the "had I but known" narrative style. Rinehart is also considered the source of "the butler did it" plot device in her novel The Door (1930), although the exact phrase does not appear in her work. She also worked to tell the stories and experiences of front line soldiers during World War I, one of the first women to travel to the Belgian front lines. Rinehart wrote hundreds of short stories, poems, travelogues and articles. Many of her short stories, books, and plays were adapted for movies, such as Bab: A Sub-Deb (1917), The Bat (1926), The Bat Whispers (1930), Miss Pinkerton (1932), and The Bat (1959 remake). The novel The Circular Staircase was first adapted to the screen as a silent film in 1915, and later as an episode in the TV show Climax! in 1956. In 1933 RCA Victor released The Bat as one of the early talking book recordings. She co-wrote the 1920 play The Bat which was later adapted into the 1930 film The Bat Whispers. The latter influenced Bob Kane in the creation of Batman's iconography. ... (Wikipedia.org)

CONTENTS Mind over Motor Like a Wolf on The Fold The Simple Lifers Tish's Spy My Country Tish of Thee About the author:Mary Roberts Rinehart (August 12, 1876 - September 22, 1958) was an American writer, often called the American Agatha Christie. Rinehart published her first mystery novel The Circular Staircase in 1908, which introduced the "had I but known" narrative style. Rinehart is also considered the source of "the butler did it" plot device in her novel The Door (1930), although the exact phrase does not appear in her work. She also worked to tell the stories and experiences of front line soldiers during World War I, one of the first women to travel to the Belgian front lines. Rinehart wrote hundreds of short stories, poems, travelogues and articles. Many of her short stories, books, and plays were adapted for movies, such as Bab: A Sub-Deb (1917), The Bat (1926), The Bat Whispers (1930), Miss Pinkerton (1932), and The Bat (1959 remake). The novel The Circular Staircase was first adapted to the screen as a silent film in 1915, and later as an episode in the TV show Climax! in 1956. In 1933 RCA Victor released The Bat as one of the early talking book recordings. She co-wrote the 1920 play The Bat which was later adapted into the 1930 film The Bat Whispers. The latter influenced Bob Kane in the creation of Batman's iconography. ... (Wikipedia.org)