Excerpt from The Diary of Jean Evarts, 1912 In these last days the world about me has echoed the voices that I hear so constantly within. Sometimes they whisper patience, and bid me hope that the storms which have beaten down my soul in this experience called life shall rage in vain against that portal through which I go. Sometimes they ring through my soul with the wild clamor of huge bells, and stir my confused thought into fierce protests against the laws that foreordained me to misery and death. Again, they sink into whispered temptations to destroy my life, and end at once the confusion and pain. But I dare not do this - weakness has sapped my courage - and I could not know that in killing the body I had destroyed the Self. How the awful thoughts of Self beat upon my tortured soul when the storms of temptation are raging! This Self that I have found here, cast into the world without my knowledge or consent, emerging from utter darkness, only to sink again into darkness just as profound and mysterious! About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Excerpt from The Diary of Jean Evarts, 1912 California – and May! The warm earth quivers with expectancy, and the air is full of the promise of new life. The soft winds that blow from the inland are driving the rain clouds back to the ocean, and whispering to the barren hill-sides and brown valleys a message of roses, of flaming poppy fields and summer's bounty. I hear the meadow lark's sweet call, a pean of sheer gladness for life. I hear the twitter of swallows, and catch the gleam of the tanager as it flashes past me, too occupied with its renewed responsibilities to be mindful of my presence. Far down in the valley below me, the cattle, just turned into the new grass, are rejoicing in the abundance that is spread before them. I love to watch the cloud-shadows glide along this, great valley and melt into the hills far beyond. I love to sit here at sunset and see the wonderful changes of color that tint the landscape when the glowing sun tips those distant hills. I love to linger here when it has sunk behind the mountains, with night falling around me, and watch the Stars come out and the lights appear in the farm houses far below. Beyond those sentinel hills lies the bay, with its Golden Gate opening out into the great ocean. I caught a glimpse of this when they brought me here, and my heart was filled with longing to sail out through that sunlit portal and into the vast unknown - on and on, until I should come to that other gateway through which I shall soon pass. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

One of the most well-known and influential autobiographies ever written, The Education of Henry Adams is told in the third person, as if its author were watching his own life unwind. It begins with his early life in Quincy, the family seat outside of Boston, and soon moves on to primary school, Harvard College, and beyond. He learns about the unpredictability of politics from statesmen and diplomats, and the newest discoveries in technology, science, history, and art from some of the most important thinkers and creators of the day. In essentially every case, Adams claims, his education and upbringing let him down, leaving him in the dark. But as the historian David S. Brown puts it, this is a “charade”: The Education’s “greatest irony is its claim to telling the story of its author’s ignorance, confusion, and misdirection.” Instead, Adams uses its “vigorous prose and confident assertions” to attack “the West after 1400.” For instance, industrialization and technology make Adams wonder “whether the American people knew where they were driving.” And in one famous chapter, “The Dynamo and the Virgin,” he contrasts the rise of electricity and the power it brings with the strength and resilience of religious belief in the Middle Ages. The grandson and great-grandson of two presidents and the son of a politician and diplomat who served under Lincoln as minister to Great Britain, Adams was born into immense privilege, as he knew well: “Probably no child, born in the year, held better cards than he.” After growing up a Boston Brahmin, he worked as a journalist, historian, and professor, moving in early middle age to Washington. Although Adams distributed a privately printed edition of a hundred copies of The Education for friends and family in 1907, it wasn’t published more widely until 1918, the year he died. The book won the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 1919, and in 1999 a Modern Library panel placed it first on its list of the best nonfiction books published in the twentieth century. This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks.

With an introduction by award-winning novelist Barbara Kingsolver In the late nineteenth century, when the great powers in Europe were tearing Africa apart and seizing ownership of land for themselves, King Leopold of Belgium took hold of the vast and mostly unexplored territory surrounding the Congo River. In his devastatingly barbarous colonization of this area, Leopold stole its rubber and ivory, pummelled its people and set up a ruthless regime that would reduce the population by half. . While he did all this, he carefully constructed an image of himself as a deeply feeling humanitarian. Winner of the Duff Cooper Prize in 1999, King Leopold’s Ghost is the true and haunting account of this man’s brutal regime and its lasting effect on a ruined nation. It is also the inspiring and deeply moving account of a handful of missionaries and other idealists who travelled to Africa and unwittingly found themselves in the middle of a gruesome holocaust. Instead of turning away, these brave few chose to stand up against Leopold. Adam Hochschild brings life to this largely untold story and, crucially, casts blame on those responsible for this atrocity.

From Jewish publishers to Appalachian poets, Green s cultural study reveals the role of "Mountain Whites" in American racial history. Part One (1880-1935) explores the networks that created American pluralism, revealing Appalachia s essential role in shaping America s understanding of African Americans, Anglos, Jews, Southerners, and Immigrants. Drawing upon archival research and deft close readings of poems, Part Two (1934-1946) delves into the inner-workings of literary history and shows how diverse alliances used four books of poetry about Appalachia to change America s notion of race, region, and pluralism. Green starts with how Jesse Stuart and the Agrarians defended Southern whiteness, follows how James Still appealed to liberals, shows how Muriel Rukeyser put Appalachia at the center of anti-fascism, and ends with how Don West and the Progressives struggled to form interracial labor unions in the South.