Great leaps forward in scientific understanding have, throughout history, engendered similar leaps forward in how we understand ourselves. Now, the new hybrid disciplines of evolutionary biology and social physics are making the next leap possible -- and fundamentally altering our notions of individual identity. If identity is a fact not derived from within the individual, but conferred on an individual by a group, or network, a host of assumptions about how governments work, how conflicts...

"One of the most entertaining books in the whole library of railroad literature." -Railroader, 1883"Great popularity, a treasure of entertainment." -Electrical World, 1883While early telegraph lines often ran alongside railroad tracks in the United States, it was not until 1851 that the telegraph was first used for train routing by Charles Minot, Superintendent of the Erie Railroad. As the practice gained wider acceptance in the 1860s and 1...

What can we learn from Bitcoin and Burning Man about re-inventing money and designing better forms of self-governance?Why are “decentralized autonomous organizations” the next great Internet disruption?From Bitcoin to Burning Man and Beyond: The Quest for Autonomy and Identity in a Digital Society explores a new generation of digital technologies that are re-imagining the very foundations of identity, governance, trust and social organization.The fifteen essays of t...

EXCERPT"I intend that this autobiography shall become a model for all future autobiographies when it is published, after my death, and I also intend that it shall be read and admired a good many centuries because of its form and method—a form and method whereby the past and the present are constantly brought face to face, resulting in contrasts which newly fire up the interest all along, like contact of flint with steel. Moreover, this autobiography of mine does no...

This comprehensive volume of all of Twain's shorter works is representative of his vast humor and wit. "The Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain" includes the following tales: The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, The Story of the Bad Little Boy, Cannibalism in the Cars, A Day at Niagara, Legend of the Capitoline Venus, Journalism in Tennessee, A Curious Dream, The Facts in the Great Beef Contract, How I Edited an Agricultural Paper, A Medieval Romance, My Watch, Political Econom...

The short story is often viewed as an inferior relation to the Novel. But it is an art in itself. To take a story and distil its essence into fewer pages while keeping character and plot rounded and driven is not an easy task. Many try and many fail. In this series we look at short stories from many of our most accomplished writers. Miniature masterpieces with a lot to say. In this volume we examine some of the short stories of Mark Twain. Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born in 1835 and is f...

For nearly two decades before Mark Twain published his finest novel,Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, he was refining his craft and winning tremendous popularity with his short stories and sketches. This richly entertaining and comprehensive collection presents sixty-five of the very best of Mark Twain’s short pieces, from the classic frontier sketch “The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” to the richly imaginative fable “Extract from Captain Stormfield’s V...

This is a record of the horrifying and heart-wrenching personal experiences by Alcott. Working as a nurse during the American Civil War she had a personal encounter with the brutalities of mankind. Her amazing style of narration breathes life into the historic events that shaped the America of today.

This file includes: an Old Town by the Sea, Ponkapog Papers, The Queen of Sheba and My Cousin the Colonel, The Stillwater Tragedy, and The Story of a Bad Boy.According to Wikipedia: "Thomas Bailey Aldrich (November 11, 1836 March 19, 1907) was an American poet, novelist, traveler and editor, born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire... In 1865 he moved to Boston and was editor for ten years for Ticknor and Fields—then at the height of their prestige—of the eclectic weekly Every Saturday, discontin...

Though written during her exile in England, from which she would not return until her death, Asia Booth Clarke's memoir of her famous brother was not published until 1938. She had given the "locked book" to a friend for keeping "to publish sometime if he sees fit."The friend did not see fit to publish it while Asia, her brother Edwin Booth, or her former husband John Clarke were still alive. So it was left to Eleanor Farjeon to complete the task after the death of her father.

Dear William Dean Howells, Joseph Hopkins Twichell, Joseph T. Goodman, and other old friends of Mark Twain

Across the Plains (1892) is the middle section of Robert Louis Stevenson's three-part travel memoir which began with The Amateur Emigrant and ended with The Silverado SquattersThis book contains 12 chapters, each a story or essay unto itself. The title chapter is the longest, and is dividied into 7 subsections. It describes Stevenson's arrival at New York as an immigrant, along with hundreds of other Europeans, and his train journey from New York to San Francisco in an immigrant tra...