検索キーワード： 著者 "Popular Culture and Religion." すべてのカテゴリー

The Wishing Well by Mildred A. Wirt Benson. PENNY PARKER is a teen-aged sleuth and amateur reporter with an uncanny knack for uncovering and solving unusual, sometimes bizarre mysteries. The only daughter of widower Anthony Parker, publisher of the "Riverview Star," Penny has been raised to be self-sufficient, outspoken, innovative, and extraordinarily tenacious. Her cheerful, chatty manner belies a shrewd and keenly observant mind. Penny was the creation of Mildred A. Wirt, who was also the author of the original Nancy Drew series (under the pseudonym Carolyn Keene). Wirt became frustrated ...

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. Heart of Darkness is a novella written by Joseph Conrad. Before its 1903 publication, it appeared as a three-part series (1899) in Blackwood's Magazine. It was classified by the Modern Library website editors as one of the "100 best novels" and part of the Western canon. The story centres on Charles Marlow, who narrates most of the book. He is an Englishman who takes a foreign assignment from a Belgian trading company as a river-boat captain in Africa. Heart of Darkness exposes the dark side of European colonization while exploring the three levels of ...

White Fang by Jack London. When White Fang is birthed in a cave to a wolf sire and a wolf/dog halfbreed dam, he is heir to two traditions. At first he is content to explore and learn laws of the Wild. But then his mother is caught and held by old memories of a past relationship with Man, and White Fang follows her into service with the Indians. Life among sled dogs is hardly less cruel and dangerous than living in the Wild, but brutality notches upward when his drunken master sells him to a nasty, twisted hanger-on at a riverside town of white men. He is stripped of everything soft and ...

China and the Chinese by Herbert Allen Giles. Herbert Allen Giles (1845-1935) spent several years as a diplomat in China and in 1897 was appointed Cambridge University’s second professor of Chinese. His published works cover Chinese language and literature, history and philosophy. This series of lectures, published as “China and the Chinese”, was given at Columbia University in 1902, to mark the establishment of a Chinese professorship there. The lectures were not intended for the specialist, more to urge a wider and more systematic study of China and its culture, and to encourage ...

The Call of the Wild by Jack London. Buck, a magnificent mix of St. Bernard and Scotch shepherd dog, rules contentedly at Judge Miller’s place in California’s Santa Clara Valley. But 1897 brings the Klondike Gold Rush, and Buck is the perfect kind of dog to service sleds—so he is stolen and spirited away to the Northland. There he learns a hard life at the hands of tough men and competing sled dogs, which sharpen his instincts and survival skills. Thousands of miles of grueling sled travel and toil nearly wear Buck out, until chance in the form of John Thornton saves him. This “ideal...

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. Mary Lennox is a spoiled, middle-class, self-centered child who has been recently orphaned. She is accepted into the quiet and remote country house of an uncle, who has almost completely withdrawn into himself after the death of his wife. Mary gradually becomes drawn into the hidden side of the house: why does she hear the crying of a unseen child? Why is there an overgrown, walled garden, its door long locked?

American Indian Fairy Tales by William Trowbridge Larned. With no written language, Native Americans living in the Lake Superior region passed their cultural identity down through the generations by way of stories. Far more than mere tales to amuse children, they passed along the collective wisdom of the tribes. In the 1830s, government Indian Agent and ethnologist Henry R Schoolcraft learned the language of these people and went out to collect and preserve their stories before the tribes disappeared under the westward rush of American civilization. Though these stories were recast as ...

Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin Abbott Abbott. Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions is an 1884 science fiction novella by the English schoolmaster Edwin Abbott Abbott. As a satire, Flatland offered pointed observations on the social hierarchy of Victorian culture. However, the novella's more enduring contribution is its examination of dimensions; in a foreword to one of the many publications of the novella, noted science writer Isaac Asimov described Flatland as "The best introduction one can find into the manner of perceiving dimensions." As such, the novella is still ...

The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind by Gustave Le Bon. "Civilisations as yet have only been created and directed by a small intellectual aristocracy, never by crowds. Crowds are only powerful for destruction. Their rule is always tantamount to a barbarian phase. A civilisation involves fixed rules, discipline, a passing from the instinctive to the rational state, forethought for the future, an elevated degree of culture — all of them conditions that crowds, left to themselves, have invariably shown themselves incapable of realising. In consequence of the purely destructive nature of ...

Dracula by Bram Stoker. Dracula as written by Bram Stoker in 1897 was not the first depiction of vampires and other such creatures, Gothic horror stories had been around since the early part of the century. The story related by Bram Stoker is told in an epistolary fashion utilising the journals and diaries of the main protagonists. The storyline is relatively simple; Dracula the longest living and most evil of vampires comes to England with a view to increasing the vampire population of the country. He is thwarted by five friends and driven back to his castle in Transylvania. It is not the...

The Clock Strikes Thirteen by Mildred A. Wirt Benson. Penny Parker is a teen-aged sleuth and amateur reporter who has an uncanny knack for uncovering and solving unusual, sometimes bizarre mysteries. The only daughter of widower Anthony Parker, publisher of the "Riverview Star," Penny has been raised to be self-sufficient, outspoken, innovative, and extraordinarily tenacious. Her cheerful, chatty manner belies a shrewd and keenly observant mind. Penny was the creation of Mildred A. Wirt, who was also the author of the original Nancy Drew series (under the pseudonym Carolyn Keene). Wirt ...

The Colonel's Dream by Charles Waddell Chesnutt. In this novel, Chesnutt described the hopelessness of Reconstruction in a post-Civil War South that was bent on reestablishing the former status quo and rebuilding itself as a region of the United States where new forms of "slavery" would replace the old. This novel illustrated how race hatred and the impotence of a reluctant Federal Government trumped the rule of law, ultimately setting the stage for the rise of institutions such as Jim Crow, lynching, chain gangs and work farms--all established with the intent of disenfranchising African ...

A Room with a View by E. M. Forster. The 1908 novel A Room With a View is the story of Lucy Honeychurch, a young English girl traveling to Italy for the first time. While staying in Florence, Lucy meets the unconventional George Emerson, with whom she shares a single passionate kiss, much to the horror of her chaperone, her spinsterish cousin Charlotte. Back in England, Lucy finds she must choose between George and her rather stuffy fiance Cecil Vyse. Forster's wonderfully comic romance satirizes turn-of-the-century English culture (as did his other major novel of the period, Howards End).

The Thirty-nine Steps by John Buchan. Richard Hannay’s boredom is soon relieved when the resourceful engineer is caught up in a web of secret codes, spies, and murder on the eve of WWI. This exciting action-adventure story was the inspiration for Alfred Hitchcock’s 1939 classic film of the same name. John Buchan (1875-1940) was Governor General of Canada and a popular novelist. Although condemned by some for anti-Semitic dialog in The Thirty-Nine Steps, his character’s sentiments do not represent the view of the author who was identified in Hitler’s Sonderfahndungsliste (special ...

The Adventures of Sherlock by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. A collection of twelve short stories featuring Conan Doyle's legendary detective, originally published as single stories in Strand Magazine and subsequently collected into a single volume. There is not always a crime committed nor a culprit to find, and when there is, Holmes does not invariably get his man. However, his extraordinary powers of deduction generally solve the mystery, often to the discomfiture of the official police force. Holmes is a man of many facets, and I do not share the common perception of Holmes as cold and ...

The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens. The Mystery of Edwin Drood is the final novel by Charles Dickens. The novel was left unfinished at the time of Dickens' death, and readers have often speculated what the ending might have been. The novel is named after Edwin Drood, but it mostly tells the story of his uncle, a Jekyll-and-Hyde-esque choirmaster named John Jasper, who is in love with his pupil, Rosa Bud. Miss Bud is Drood's fiancée, and has caught the eye of the high-spirited and hot-tempered Neville Landless, who comes from Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) with his twin sister, Helena, ...

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving. "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" is a short story by Washington Irving contained in his collection The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., written while he was living in Birmingham, England, and first published in 1820. It was based on a German folktale set in the Dutch culture of Post-Revolutionary War in New York State. With Irving's companion piece "Rip Van Winkle", it is among the earliest examples of American fiction still read today

The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells. H. G. Wells wrote The War of the Worlds in 1898, when there was much speculation about life on the planet Mars. The book is considered to be one of the first science fiction novels. In the story, an English gentleman narrates the events of a violent and fast paced Martian invasion. The frightening images of people fleeing from gigantic tripod machines and the prospect of life under Martial rule have served as a bottomless well of inspiration for popular culture. The novel has served as a template for many derivative or inspired works, including comics,...

George Sand by Bertha Thomas. "Famous Women: George Sand" by Bertha Thomas is a historical account written in the late 19th century. The book explores the life and accomplishments of George Sand, a prominent 19th-century French writer known for her distinct literary voice and unconventional lifestyle. It aims to provide a concise overview of Sand's multifaceted life, emphasizing her literary career and personal experiences, shedding light on her as an extraordinary figure in the realm of women's history. The opening of the text sets the stage for George Sand's life, revealing her noble ...

Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton. Orthodoxy is a book that has become a classic of Christian apologetics. In the book's preface Chesterton states the purpose is to "attempt an explanation, not of whether the Christian faith can be believed, but of how he personally has come to believe it." In it, Chesterton presents an original view of the Christian religion. He sees it as the answer to natural human needs, the "answer to a riddle" in his own words, and not simply as an arbitrary truth received from somewhere outside the boundaries of human experience.