Short Nonfiction Collection, Vol. 072
Various
Read by LibriVox Volunteers
Twenty short nonfiction works, individually chosen by the readers. "The ground rose and fell in successive furrows, like the ruffled waters of a lake, and I became bewildered in my ideas..." John James Audubon's vivid recollection of the 1812 New Madrid earthquake is one of several Vol. 072 selections with a scientific focus. Others include Luminous Plants; The Sunbeam and the Spectrascope; and biographies of two shipbuilders: Robert Fulton and Thomas Andrews. The emotive and rational sides of human nature are evinced in essays (The Game of Scandal; Bashful; Child Psychology and Nonsense); treatises (Theory and Practice in Government Reform; Plagiarizing Aristotle); and the records of two very different murder trials: John Kimber (1792); and James Sullivan (1851). Travel to foreign lands; their history and arts are well represented: Rambles About Rome (1907); The Mosaics of Ravenna, Italy; Travellers Before the Christian Era; Northern Europe to the Beginning of the Fourteenth Century. Literary and artistic concerns round out Vol. 072, with newspaper accounts of Oscar Wilde's visits to the U.S.; William Faulkner reminiscing about his youthful discovery of literature; and artist and teacher Arthur Guptill explaining how to render pencil sketches from photographs. Summary by Sue Anderson
(6 hr 26 min)