The title page gives this book the subtitle, “True stories of the intrepid bravery and stirring adventures of missionaries with uncivilized man, wild beasts, and the forces of nature in all parts of the world.” The thrilling accounts in this collection include stories of Jacob Chamberlain’s medical ministry in India, the dangers faced by Alexander Mackay in Uganda, James Chalmers’ work among the headhunters of New Guinea, John Paton’s mission to the South Sea cannibals, and the Hawaiian queen Kapiolani’s challenge to the gods of the volcano. “Romantic” in the sense that these brave missionaries faced the unknown, but never “romanticized” – all sacrificed home and luxury, and many su...
“...if I should talk to a stenographer two hours a day for a hundred years, I should still never be able to set down a tenth part of the things which have interested me in my lifetime.”
The words of Mark Twain in his introduction to Chapters from my Autobiography provide a tantalizing glimpse of what is in store for the reader! Mark Twain, whose real name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens was still working on his reminiscences when he died in 1910. This book is really only a portion of the complete work.
The interesting part of his autobiography is that the first volume of 700 odd pages was published exactly 100 years after his death, in 2010 by the Univer...
One of the most prolific and multi-talented geniuses the world has ever seen, Thomas Alva Edison's life is indeed an inspiration for each new generation. Today we live in a world that would not have been possible if not for several of his important inventions – the electric light bulb, the motion picture camera, electric power distribution, the phonograph, and a host of other things that we take for granted today. In fact, he still holds the world record for the maximum number of patents, numbering 1093 in all!
Edison – His Life and Inventions by Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin, published in 1910 was in fact a biography commissioned by Edison himself. Dye...
This autobiographical work describes the author’s harrowing experience caught on a small drifting piece of ice, while crossing a frozen bay by dog team on the Northern Peninsula of Newfoundland.
Long before Christiane Amanpour, Frances Fitzgerald and Martha Gellhorn blazed a trail in courageous investigative journalism, a pioneering and intrepid writer and journalist whose pen name was Nellie Bly opened up a whole new field in what had previously been a strictly male domain.
Ten Days in a Madhouse was published as a series of articles in the New York World during 1887. Nellie Bly was given the assignment by her editor to have herself committed to an insane asylum in New York with a “view to writing a plain and unvarnished narrative of the treatment of patients therein and the methods of management...” She was to feign insanity and get herself legally declared ...
Nat Love was born a slave, emancipated into abject poverty, grew up riding the range as a cowboy and spent his maturity riding the rails as a Pullman Porter. For me, the most amazing thing about him is that despite the circumstances of his life, which included being owned like a farm animal solely because of the color of his skin and spending later decades living and working as an equal with white coworkers, he was an unrepentant racist! Convinced that the only good Indian was a dead one, and that all Mexicans were “greasers” and/or “bums,” he rarely passed up a chance to shoot a member of either group, whether in self-defense or cold blood, and shows no sign of having appreciated the ...
Famous Men of Greece is a series of biographical sketches written for the purpose of making the study of history lively and interesting by giving insight into the men who lived during this time.
Rosa Luxemburg war eine bedeutende Vertreterin der europäischen Arbeiterbewegung und des proletarischen Internationalismus. Sie gehörte zu den Gründungsmitgliedern der KPD, deren Programm sie hauptsächlich verfasste.
Während des ersten Weltkriegs verbrachte Rosa Luxemburg drei Jahre und vier Monate im Gefängnis, ein Jahr im Berliner Weibergefängnis (Barnimstraße), dann zwei Jahre und vier Monate in Berlin, Wronke und Breslau. Während dieser Zeit schrieb sie viele persönliche Briefe an Sophie Liebknecht, die einen tiefen Einblick in die starke Persönlichkeit dieser ungewöhnlichen Frau geben. Die Leser lernen “den Reichtum ihres unermüdlich quellenden Herzens kennen. Sie sollen seh...
The nineteenth century was marked by intense colonization by countries like Britain, France, Portugal, Spain and the Netherlands. Initially, the pioneering efforts were made by men who battled unfamiliar terrain to create territories that they marked out as their own, while their wives, mothers, sisters and daughters kept the home and hearth in their native land. However, with travel becoming more common and family life assuming more importance, the women too began to travel to the four corners of the earth. There are many accounts by Victorian women of their travels to the colonies and these are valuable insights into the social history and fabric of the colonies. Many of these accoun...