The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin is a classic work of American literature that offers a fascinating glimpse into the life and mind of one of the country's founding fathers.
Excerpt: "e;In a little saucer-like valley of the lower Berkshires, where the hills stand about in a wide circle, lies that most beautiful of Connecticut villages, Litchfield.
Excerpt: "e;It was the evening of one of the last days of spring, when that delightful season is blending with the approaching summer, and when the sun was setting on one of those green and fertile landscapes which we find nowhere but in England, that a young man paused upon the crest of the eminence which overlooks, from the southward, the beautiful little vale and sequestered village of Acton-Rennel, and, with a kindling eye and flushing cheek, surveyed the scene and all its features, on which he had not gazed for what now seemed a long and weary lapse of time.
Excerpt: "e;When the Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated at Sarajevo in Serbia on June 28, 1914, it never for a moment occurred to any one in this country that the crime could in any way affect the destinies of the First or Grenadier Regiment of Footguards.
The Land of Gold: Three Years in California is a memoir written by Walter Colton, who was a chaplain in the United States Navy and the first American alcalde, or mayor, of Monterey, California.
Excerpt: "e;On the evening of the last day of June 1806, the transports which had brought our troops from Sicily anchored off the Italian coast, in the Bay of St.
Deck and Port, or Incidents of a Cruise in the United States Frigate Congress to California is a memoir written by Walter Colton, an American chaplain, and writer, about his experiences during a naval expedition to California in 1846-1847.
Excerpt: "e;In the Highlands of Perthshire a deadly feud had existed, from time immemorial, between the Lisles of Inchavon and the Stuarts of Lochisla.
Excerpt: "e;Dear Reed: I have delayed sending back the proof sheets of the third edition of your "e;Cadet Life at West Point"e; because I wanted to read them.
Excerpt: "e;This little volume contains a brief account of the most important events in the life-career of two notable spies in our War for Independence, NATHAN HALE and JOHN ANDRE.
A "e;reverential and revealing"e; biography of Siddhartha, the ancient Indian spiritual teacher upon whose teachings Buddhism was founded (Kirkus Reviews).
Excerpt: "e;COMPANY L was organized and mustered into the State service June 22, 1893, and assigned as the 11th company of the Second Regiment with headquarters at Paterson, with the following officers: Addison Ely, Captain; Wilkin Bookstaver, First Lieutenant; Joseph J.
John James Geer, a Union soldier captured at the Battle of Shiloh, recounts his experiences as a prisoner in the Confederacy in Beyond the Lines: A Yankee Prisoner Loose in Dixie.
Excerpt: "e;Among the many gallant Irishmen, and those descended from the Irish race, who served in the armies of France, and sought there those honours and distinctions which political misfortune and studied misrule denied them at home, I know of none more distinguished, and of none whose name is more worthy of being rescued from oblivion, than General the Count de Lally, the ill-requited leader of the troops of Louis XV.
Excerpt: "e;There was an air of great refinement in both husband and wife, an air that contrasted strongly and strangely with their plain attire and circumscribed dwelling.
Excerpt: "e;This soldier, whose name, from the circumstances connected with his remarkable story, daring courage, and terrible fate, is still remembered in the regiment, in the early history of which he bears so prominent a part, was one of the first who enlisted in Captain Campbell of Finab's independent band of the Reicudan Dhu, or Black Watch, when the six separate companies composing this Highland force were established along the Highland Border in 1729, to repress the predatory spirit of certain tribes, and to prevent the levy of black mail.
Excerpt: "e;The first volume of "e;Tactics,"e; which appeared in its first edition in 1896, and for which the preparatory work reached back more than a decade, now appears in its fourth edition in a completely changed form.
"e;Under the Guns: A Woman's Reminiscences of the Civil War"e; by Annie Wittenmyer is a vivid and deeply personal account of life on the front lines-not as a soldier, but as a compassionate and determined woman who witnessed the brutal realities of war while tirelessly serving the wounded and the dying.
Excerpt: "e;On the evening of the 22nd November, 1440, the report of a brass carthoun, or cannon-royale, as it pealed from the castle of Edinburgh, made all who were in the thoroughfares below raise their eyes to the grey ramparts, where the white smoke was seen floating away from the summit of King David's Tower, and then people were seen hastening towards the southern side of the city, where the quaint old streets and narrow alleys opened into the fields, or the oakwoods of Bristo and Drumsheugh.
Volume Two of the thirteenth-century Venetian explorer's famous travelogue, recounting his historic journeys through Asia and his encounters with Kublai Khan.
True stories drawn from the inspirational and heartrending history of the Underground RailroadIt is estimated that by 1850 over one hundred thousand slaves had escaped to freedom in the North via a network of safe houses and secret routes known collectively as the Underground Railroad.
The world's most famous spiritual autobiographyWritten between 397 and 398 CE, The Confessions of Saint Augustine is the story of Augustine of Hippo's childhood in Numidia, his youth and early adulthood in Carthage, Rome, and Milan, and his conversion to Christianity.
A fascinating behind-the-scenes account of life at the White House in the second half of the nineteenth centuryHired in January 1865 as one of four White House bodyguards assigned to protect the president, Colonel William H.
