Reproduction of the original: The Life of King Edward VII by J. Castell Hopkins

During the Age of Revolution, Paris came alive with wildly popular virtuoso performances. Whether the performers were musicians or chefs, chess players or detectives, these virtuosos transformed their technical skills into dramatic spectacles, presenting the marvelous and the outré for spellbound audiences. Who these characters were, how they attained their fame, and why Paris became the focal point of their activities is the subject of Paul Metzner's absorbing study. Covering the years 1775 to 1850, Metzner describes the careers of a handful of virtuosos: chess masters who played several games at once; a chef who sculpted hundreds of four-foot-tall architectural fantasies in sugar; the first police detective, whose memoirs inspired the invention of the detective story; a violinist who played whole pieces on a single string. He examines these virtuosos as a group in the context of the society that was then the capital of Western civilization. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1999.

The Story of the Blacks: The Aborigines of Australia by Charles White, first published in 1904. The black race of Australia will in a short time be but a memory, for the final issue in the unequal struggle between the white man and his coloured brother is not far off, and the last chapter of the history of the aborigines is even now being written. In dealing with this subject I do not purpose devoting much time to speculation concerning their origin; that is a division in which the general reader could not be expected to take any interest, howsoever attractive it may be to scientists.