Non-fiction audiobooks page 40

The Discourse on Method is best known as the source of the famous quotation “cogito ergo sum”, “I think, therefore I am.” …. It is a method which gives a solid platform from which all modern natural sciences could evolve. With this work, the idea of skepticism was revived from the ancients such as Sextus Empiricus and modified to account for a truth that Descartes found to be incontrovertible. Descartes started his line of reasoning by doubting everything, so as to assess the world from a fresh perspective, clear of any preconceived notions.

Author Elizabeth Latimer synthesizes notes from a variety of sources to produce this summary of the nation of France in the 19th century. (Summary by Cathy Barratt)

This book, published in 1920, analyzes the literary progression of Samuel Clemens and his shortcomings (which are debatable). Brooks attributes Clemens' increasing sense of pessimism to the repression of his creative spirit due largely to his mother and his wife.

Plague, piracy and payments to members of Parliament! The town of Bristol, England in the Sixteenth Century was a fascinating place, and John Latimer's book is a comprehensive guide to this period, describing royal visits from both Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, as well as detailing contemporary pastimes such as wrestling competitions, bear-baiting and traveling players. He explains the sanitary arrangements, dreadful postal service and the difficulty of moving from the status of town to "City" among many other interesting topics.
It is made up of papers originally published in the Bristol Mercury in 1902-3 and is read by Bristolian, Elaine Webb.
Summary by Cori Samuel and Elaine Webb

Early in the course of the Reformation (1520) Martin Luther penned a trilogy of foundational documents addressing the German Nobility, the Church and the Christian. "To the Christian Nobility" appeared first. In it, Luther identifies and attacks the three walls with which the papacy insulates itself from reformation. Next, he discusses three areas that need to be addressed by a council. Finally, he offers 27 articles respecting reforms needed in Christendom.

Arnold and Frost were English archaeologists who traveled to the Yucatan Peninsula and wrote "the first book ever written by Englishmen on Yucatan—that Egypt of the New World, where, it is now generally admitted, Central American Civilisation reached its apogee—and to be, for the present at least, the only Englishmen who can claim to have explored the uncivilised north-eastern portions of the Peninsula and the islands of her eastern coast." Their studies brought them to the conclusion, contrary to the bulk of the body of other contemporary experts, "that America's first architects were Buddhist immigrants from Java and Indo-China."

The Elements of Ornithology is one of seven in a Series of First Books of Natural History Prepared for the Use of Schools and Colleges. This succinct little textbook from 1845 presents an introduction to ornithology. The information, albeit not current, is still interesting and of use as a general overview of bird biology and classification. The author was a surgeon in the U.S. Navy and president of the Academy of Natural Sciences.

Жития и похвалы святых подобятся светлостию звездам: якоже бо звезды положением на небеси утвержденны суть, всю же поднебесную просвещают, тыяжде и от Индиан зрятся, ни сокрываются от скифов, землю озаряют, и морю светят, и плавающих корабли управляют: ихже имен аще и не вемы множества ради, обаче светлей доброте их чудимся. Сице и светлость святых, аще и затворены суть мощи их во гробех, но силы их в поднебесней земными пределы не суть определенны: чудимся тех житию, и удивляемся славе, еюже Бог угодившыя Ему прославляет.

[St. Symeon Metaphrastes on the Lives of the Saints, 10th century A. D. ENGLISH TRANSLATION: The lives and the eulogies of the Saints resemble, by their lumino...

Jules Henri Poincaré (1854–1912) was one of France’s greatest mathematicians and theoretical physicists, and a philosopher of science.

As a mathematician and physicist, he made many original fundamental contributions to pure and applied mathematics, mathematical physics, and celestial mechanics. He was responsible for formulating the Poincaré conjecture, one of the most famous problems in mathematics. In his research on the three-body problem, Poincaré became the first person to discover a chaotic deterministic system which laid the foundations of modern chaos theory. He is considered to be one of the founders of the field of topology. Poincaré introduced the modern principle of...

Prescient look at the church, its message and role in society, both perceived and true, focused through the lens of the biblical doctrine of love, and demonstrated in relationships between parent and child, parishioners and public, and pastor and people.