Audio Books

Spell of Egypt, The

Hichens, Robert Smythe
The author, a British journalist and novelist, is interested in the feel of the places he visits. He describes at length a visit he has made to Egypt, with emphasis on the emotional response the places generate.

My Hunt After 'The Captain'

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Holmes describes his frantic search through Civil War torn landscapes for his wounded son, the future Supreme Court Justice. Originally published in The Atlantic Magazine, 1862. Holmes, Sr. (1809 -1894) was an American physician, poet, professor, lecturer, and author. He was regarded by his peers as one of the best writers of the 19th century. His most famous prose works are the "Breakfast Table" series, which began with The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858). He is also recognized as an important medical reformer.

Eighteen Months' Imprisonment

Donald Shaw
This is an absorbing memoir of an inmate's experiences and impressions while in a London prison. He describes himself as "a man of education and worldly experience" and weighing "19 stone 13 lbs" (279 lbs), a stone being 14 lbs, at the beginning of his imprisonment but not upon his release. The author writes with a reporter's keen perception and a talented novelist's ability to engage and at times amuse the reader.

Notes of a Camp Follower on the Western Front

E. W. Hornung
In 1915 Oscar Hornung, son of the famous author E W Hornung, was killed at Ypres after less than a year as a soldier in Flanders. He was only 20. Two years later E W Hornung volunteered to help run one of the YMCA canteens close behind the front line.

This book is Hornung’s own account of the time he spent in Northern France: first helping in a canteen, then running a library for the enlisted men. He wanted to be near the place where his son died, to meet the young soldiers who were fighting the war, and to make their lives a little better. More than anything, Hornung wanted to believe there was a greater purpose to he war: in his descriptions soldiers are always heroes, the struggles just, and leaders wise and kind.

But whatever his motivations and blind-spots, Hornung brought all his skills as a highly experienced novelist to the task of telling his story. We feel we are there with him while he talks to the soldiers, travels to the front line to serve cocoa and biscuits under fire, and finally sets up a lending library only a couple of miles from No Man’s Land. Even Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (a former friend who reported Hornung to the authorities for promoting pacifism) grudgingly admitted that this book contains some of the best descriptions of life on the Western Front.

(The cover shows the western front as it passed trough the town of Arras in 1918 at the time the author would have known it)

Woman's Experiences in the Great War

Louise Mack
An eye-witness account of the fall of Antwerp to the Germans in the opening months of World War I, Mack’s story has passages of extraordinary vividness and immediacy. Flawed by the most treacly sentiment in some places and the most ferocious anti-German invective in others, her account endures as an uncommonly forthright, passionate testimony to those tragic events and the ordinary people who were the true heroes of them. As a forty-something, coquettish war correspondent wrapped in sable furs and speaking French in her native Australian accent, she seems to have inspired amusement in some observers, but her courage in the face of wartime brutality bordered on suicidal effrontery, as she insisted time after time on having a vantage-point in the most dangerous places at the most dangerous times. Perhaps over-generous to the “little” Belgians (who had not long before this been perpetrators of hideous imperial atrocities themselves), she is able to be honest even about those she admires most, pointing out, for example, the appalling number of spies among the Belgian population and the foibles of those who claimed to be its leaders. There are startling moments in this book, riveting details that could only have been recorded by an eyewitness as audacious and authentic as Mack, no matter her sentimental biases.

Diary of Samuel Pepys 1663

Samuel Pepys
Another jam-packed year for Pepys, making provisions for Tangier, indulging his passion for the theatre, always thoroughly engaged in his relationships with his wife and family, pursuing his foundational work for the Royal Navy, and displaying his hard-headed focus on money and his accounts.

Over Prairie Trails

Frederick Philip Grove
When Frederick Philip Grove settled in a remote area of Manitoba in the early years of the 20th century, he found work teaching in a school over 30 miles from his home. He commuted by horse-and-wagon or horse-and-sleigh each weekend, and seven of those long and challenging journeys are recorded in “Over Prairie Trails,” published in 1922.
Grove has a sharp eye for details of nature that were of life-and-death importance to the lone prairie traveller — the shifting aspects of skies, wind, fog, and snow. On one level, the book is a treasury of documentary observation and nature writing.
However, while Grove claims to offer a naturalist’s “plain truth,” we come to realize that he is creating a “tale” as much as a nature diary. He selects and arranges his material. Sometimes this means transforming his accounts into archetypal heroic journeys, casting himself as the Odyssean adventurer who battles his way through seas of snow and fog to return to his wife and child. At other times, his reports launch meditations on the nature of observation, consciousness, and the construction of meaning.
“Over Prairie Trails” is a landmark in Canadian writing, influencing the way nature — especially the Canadian winter— would be written about for decades to come.

Soldier's Diary

Ralph Scott
This 1923 memoir of a World War I soldier (Royal Engineer and hand-to-hand combatant) is a well written much respected first-hand account of the brutal fighting in the last year of the war.

Life of Honorable William F. Cody, Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide

Col. William F. Cody
The life and adventures of Honorable William F. Cody--Buffalo Bill--as told by himself, make up a narrative which reads more like romance than reality, and which in many respects will prove a valuable contribution to the records of our Western frontier history. While no literary excellence is claimed for the narrative, it has the greater merit of being truthful, and is verified in such a manner that no one can doubt its veracity. The frequent reference to such military men as Generals Sheridan, Carr, Merritt, Crook, Terry, Colonel Royal, and other officers under whom Mr. Cody served as scout and guide at different times and in various sections of the frontier, during the numerous Indian campaigns of the last ten or twelve years, affords ample proof of his genuineness as a thoroughbred scout.

Chancellorsville and Gettysburg

Abner Doubleday
Abner Doubleday began the Civil War as a Union officer and aimed the first cannon shot in response to the bombardment opened on Ft. Sumter in 1861. Two years later, after a series of battles (including Antietam, where he was wounded), Doubleday took over a division in the Army of the Potomac's 1st Corps.

These are his memoirs of service in two of the War's great campaigns. At Chancellorsville, a very promising start made by General Hooker against Lee's Confederate forces fell to a defeat when, in Doubleday's estimation, normal and prudent precautions against surprise in the heavily-wooded battlefield were not carried out; he also seemingly apologizes for Hooker's lack of leadership during the battle as a result of his having been stunned by a cannon ball hitting the post against which he was leaning.

After Chancellorsville, Hooker was replaced as Army Commander by General George Meade. Doubleday describes the curious circumstances that led the two opposing armies to meet at Gettysburg in Pennsylvania. When Doubleday's superior, General John Reynolds, was killed by a sharpshooter on the first day's battle, he took over the 1st Corps and fought it well against converging Confederate divisions that badly outnumbered him. The Corps was forced by battle losses to retire, but its desperate fight bought the time needed for Union reinforcements to pour into Gettysburg and thus prevent a defeat in detail.

General Howard of the XIth Corps replaced Doubleday as the senior commander on the field, and mistakenly wrote to Meade that 1st Corps had routed after practically no fighting. Thus, when Meade arrived, he removed Doubleday from command of 1st Corps, replacing him with a more junior general from another Corps. The snub would embitter Doubleday against Meade. This book is in part Doubleday's revenge, as he picks apart Meade's indecision after the battle was essentially won, with the repulse of the famous Pickett's Charge. In his view, Meade could have won the war at that moment.

Memories of Old Montana

Con Price
Con Price recalls the 1870s through the 1940s, growing up in Iowa and South Dakota before heading out on a cattle drive into Montana. Never dull, his life was full of experiences from cattle drives to Indian encounters to cattle wars to frontier romance.

Zone Policeman 88; A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and Its Workers

Harry A. Franck
Harry A. Franck was an American travel writer. After publishing Vagabond Journey Around the World, he spent 3 months in the Canal Zone of Panama as a census-taker and police officer. This work is a series of vignettes of the Panama Canal under construction, with plenty of color and dialect. NOTE: There are racial terms and attitudes expressed in this work that will be objectionable today.

Six Women and the Invasion

Marguerite Yerta Méléra
A true tale of the wartime resilience of six Frenchwomen whose country town was invaded by the Germans during World War I.

Life of Frances Power Cobbe as Told by Herself

Frances Power Cobbe
Frances Power Cobbe was an important Irish-Anglo writer, suffragist, anti-vivisectionist, philosopher, and reformer of the mid to late 1800s. She is best known for her campaigns for women's rights (in particular, both the right to vote and the right to a full university education), and against wife abuse and vivisection. She was the lifelong partner of Welsh sculptor Mary Lloyd. This autobiography was written very late in her life, and published shortly after her death.

Soul of a People

Harold Fielding Hall
In The Soul of a People, Englishman H. Fielding explores the beliefs of the Burmese people. He offers an understandable, and yet thorough, explanation of Buddhism, and illustrates the many ways the people of Burma (Myanmar) live their faith. He also provides a glimpse into the folk-practices surrounding Nats--the spirits of individuals who have suffered traumatic deaths, who now seek peace among ancient trees. Fielding, who lived in Burma for many years, gives us an intimate, first-hand account of a people he came to admire. Although first published in 1898, it remains a pertinent and thought-provoking read.

Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Volume 01

Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
The author and Napoleon become boyhood friends when they are eight years old in Corsica. They separate when Napoleon is transferred from the Military College of Brienne to another college in Paris in 1784. Napoleon has a stern or disdainful personality. He looks down on the French, who have taken over Corsica. At age 16 Napoleon finds fault with the military education, sending his recommendations to the Minister of War. Because of this speaking out, he is speedily graduated and sent to a regiment of artillery. After diplomatic travel, the author again meets Napoleon in Paris at a time when both are in dire financial straits. After witnessing an angry-mob scene, the author goes to Stuttgart as Secretary of Legation while Napoleon returns to Corsica. In 1799 the two return to Paris. The French government wants to send Napoleon to a new location as brigadier-general of infantry. he rejects the offer and is thus struck off the list of general officers. Eventually Napoleon gets command of Paris. In 1796 Napoleon marries Josephine. His attentions to her alternate between violent outrages resulting in infidelity and the other other extreme of repentant gentleness. During the Napoleonic wars Napoleon's troops progress through Europe--first Italy, then Austria.

California

Vizetelly, Henry
Vizetelly, writing under the pseudonym J. Tyrwhitt Brooks, recalls an expedition to California he took between 1847-1848 . Originally, he planned to enlist as a surgeon for the US Army during the Mexican war, but conflicts had ended by the time he applied. In a quick change of plans, he joined a group of prospectors on their way to the newly found gold fields of California. While he might not find service in the military, his training as a physician made him a valuable addition to the ragtag team of explorers.
His training as a physician gives us an exacting perspective of the events and people who struck out from more sedate routines to prospect gold in the Californian wilderness. However, he is unprepared to find a cure for the gold fever that has depopulated the surrounding towns. Only one member of the group, an experienced fur-trapper, is able to resist the lustrous lure of nuggets, flakes and gold richly deposited in the dusty desert.
Like the others who have left jobs to prospect for gold, he learns how to live on the land and struggle through hardship away from the security of city life. His motley group of changing characters ride through sudden fortunes and disasters while meeting Mormons, Indians and not least of all a bountiful harvest of gold. Before he returns to his home in England, another quick change of fortune undoes his plans for a comfortable retirement and shows us the extent of greed that has sprung up in the mining camps.

Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne and Victoria

William Westgarth
Son of John Westgarth, surveyor-general of customs for Scotland, was born at Edinburgh, in June 1815. He was educated at the high schools at Leith and Edinburgh, and at Dr Bruce's school at Newcastle-on-Tyne. He then entered the office of G. Young and Company of Leith, who were engaged in the Australian trade, and realizing the possibilities of the new land, decided to emigrate to Australia. He arrived in Melbourne, then a town of three or four thousand inhabitants, in December 1840.

When the new colony was constituted Westgarth headed the poll for Melbourne at the election for the legislative council. He had had many activities during the previous 10 years.

He revisited Australia in 1888 and was everywhere welcomed. When the Melbourne international exhibition was opened he walked in the procession through the avenue of nations alongside Mr Francis Henty, then the sole survivor of the brotherhood who founded Victoria. As a result of his visit two volumes appeared Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne and Victoria, in 1888, and Half a Century of Australasian Progress, in 1889. Returning to Great Britain Westgarth died suddenly at Edinburgh on 28 October 1889. He married in 1853 and left a widow and two daughters.

Doctor Quintard, Chaplain C.S.A. And Second Bishop Of Tennessee Being His Story Of The War (1861-1865)

Charles Todd Quintard
Charles Quintard (1824-1898) was an Episcopal priest who, in spite of his pro-Union stance, volunteered to be a chaplain in the Confederate army in the American Civil War. A sympathetic, warm, intellectual man loved by soldier and civilian alike, he volunteered because he felt that the soldiers from his local area needed him more than his local parish. Within four months of the end of the war, he was elected bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee, an election ratified by the Episcopal Church's General Convention in October. That election is considered a major step in the healing of the divisions in that church and indeed in the larger civil society. Bishop Quintard wrote this memoir in 1896, thirty-one years after the end of the war. The Preface, chapters 1, 15, and 16 were written by the editor, Arthur Howard Noll.

Surgeon In Arms

Robert James Manion
Robert James Manion (1881-1943) was a Canadian doctor who volunteered in the Canadian medical corps during World War I. This book is his memoir of the war. After the war he entered politics and served in several Canadian governments. The listener may note a lack of mention of the United States soldier; this is because the memoir was written before the entry of that country into the war.

Diary of Samuel Pepys 1664

Samuel Pepys
Pepys continues to live life to the hilt, juggling extra-marital shenanigans with a complicated homelife, difficulties with staff, power struggles with colleagues, concerns about his relationship with his mentor Lord Sandwich, not to mention fears about war with the Dutch.

Religio Journalistici

Christopher Morley
The great Canadian journalist and humorist ruminates and reflects upon his life and calling in this 1924 little gem.

Journal Of Small Things

Helen Gansevoort Edwards Mackay
Brief journal sketches from France during WW1. The author was was American, but went on to spend much of her life in France.

Three Times and Out

Nellie McClung
The true story of M. C. Simmons, a Canadian soldier captured by the German Army during the early days of World War I. We read of his sixteen months of imprisonment, his encounters with other captured troops of the other Allied armies and his observations of the nature of his captors and their countrymen. Most compellingly we read of his escape from POW camp, his recapture and punishment, and then the capture and punishment following his second escape attempt, climaxing in his third escape attempt and daring travel through enemy territory against all odds. In McClung's words, "Private Simmons is a close and accurate observer who sees clearly and talks well. He tells a straightforward, unadorned tale, every sentence of which is true, and convincing."

Rebel's Recollections

George Eggleston
George Cary Eggleston's Civil War memoir begins with a separate essay on the living conditions and political opinions of Virginia’s citizenry before secession. The body of the work contains vivid descriptions and accounts of the men and women of the South during the time of the Confederacy. Eggleston praises its war heroes, Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Jeb Stuart, but is highly critical of Jefferson Davis and of his government’s inefficiencies, red-tape, and favoritism. The book concludes with the war's end and a tribute to the character of the newly freed slaves.
This informative and engaging work, much of which appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, enjoyed great popularity throughout the country. Originally published in 1874, it went through four editions by 1905. ( Lee Smalley)

Four-Fifty Miles to Freedom

Maurice Andrew Brackenreed Johnston
Four-Fifty Miles to Freedom is the true but little known story of the escape of eight British Prisoners-of-War from a Turkish POW camp during the First World War. The story, written by two of the escapees, describes their life in the various POW camps in Turkey in which they were moved around, and then their well-planned and executed escape from the camp at Yozgad. They were then faced with a trek of over three hundred miles across arid deserts, and a mountain range, constantly searching for water, all the while attempting to avoid detection by soldiers and the local population. A further 120 miles of hostile ocean faced them when eventually reaching the coast before they eventually set foot on friendly soil. A 'boys own' story of derring-do and survival against all odds. A must listen-to story! Summary by Kevin Green

Gentle Persuasion

Alan Gray
Twelve stories from the author's life in Scotland, by Robert Cuthbert Johnstone, writing as Alan Gray.

Confessions of a Tradesman

Frank Thomas Bullen
Frank T. Bullen is best known for his books based on his adventures at sea. However, he had a life on shore as well. He first went to sea as a boy as a cabin boy. He there had many adventures as a hand on a whaling ship. He then came ashore and tried his hand at being a "Tradesman". This is that story and also tells how he became the well-known author he is now. It is a very interesting, enjoyable and entertaining depiction of the trials and tribulations he had in his life in 19th century London as a tradesman.

Two Diaries From Middle St. John's, Berkeley, South Carolina, February - May, 1865

Mary Rhodes Waring Henagan
Two diaries from Middle St. John’s, Berkeley, South Carolina, February – May, 1865. Journals kept by Miss Susan R. Jervey and Miss Charlotte St. Julien Ravenel, at Northampton and Poooshee Plantations, and reminiscences of Mrs. (Waring) Henagan. With two contemporary reports from Federal officials. Published by the St. John’s Hunting Club, Middle St. Johns, Berkeley, South Carolina, 1921.

Escape From The Confederacy

Benjamin F. Hasson
Benjamin F Hasson was a Union officer in the Civil War of the United States. After being captured by the Confederacy, he escaped from a prison train taking prisoners to the infamous Andersonville prison. The short book points up Hasson’s ingenuity in overcoming obstacles to his flight to Union lines but also shows an insight into the lives of Southern blacks, both slave and free. This oral version omits the last section of his book, which is a list of men captured from his regiment and their fates. (david wales)

Memoir and Correspondence of Caroline Herschel

Margaret Herschel
For many people, the name Caroline Herschel will be unfamiliar, but she was one of the most significant women on the English scientific scene during the late 18th and early 19th century. Sister of the well known William Herschel (he of the discovery of Uranus and its moons and many other significant scientific discoveries), she first worked as his assistant in his astronomical works, and then went on to become a noted astronomer in her own right. She discovered eight new comets in her lifetime, and was the first woman to be paid for her contribution to science, and was awarded a Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, made an Honorary Member of the Royal Astronomical Society, an Honorary Member of the Royal Irish Academy of Science and was presented with a Gold Medal for Science by the King of Prussia on her 96th birthday. This book tells the fascinating story of her life through her letters, and commentary by her nephew's wife. Caroline Herschel was an important woman whose contributions to science should be more widely known.

Narrative of the Suffering and Defeat of the North-Western Army, Under General Winchester

William Atherton
This memoir dating from 1812ff, but only published in 1840s is a strikingly profound contrast with our modern materialism and comfort. It is personal and at the same time very formal and reserved. As a foot soldier traipsing about the wild countryside of the Midwest, hardly after the Louisiana Purchase, against British/Canadian/Native mercenaries, the story is one of looking through the wrong end of a telescope, as one not understanding the forces/motivations at play with the writer's life and his terrible hardships; as in a nightmare where a country sends its young sons to battle hardened, prepared, ruthless adults and then abandons them to their own devices when success does not immediately ensue and the true costs of the struggle and what they should have done, gradually begins to dawn on them, too late of course. In the absence of any kind of numbers and field organization it is difficult to understand all that might be going on.

Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba

Mary Georgiana Caroline Hall
In 1881, Mrs. Cecil Hall's brother went to Manitoba to farm. In 1882, she went out for a visit of some two months, and followed that visit with a long sojourn in Colorado, returning to England as the snows began to fall. While there, she had to give up her "Lady's ways" and help on the farm in many ways she'd never stoop to at home. She makes hay, cooks, paints the barn roof, and cleans. Through it all, the newness helped her keep her temper, and these letters home show an insight into the settlement of Western Canada. These letters have a feel of "Little House on the Prairie" from an English lady's point of view.

Trips in the Life of a Locomotive Engineer

Henry Dawson
Henry Dawson has written several vignettes of railroad men from the days of steam locomotives. His goal is to show the reader that they are not just rough men, but are also brave and heroic men through descriptions of divers dangers encountered on the tracks.

With Fire and Sword (Byers)

Samuel H. M. Byers
Samuel H. M. Byers was an American poet, diplomat, and soldier in the Civil War. "In war some persons seek adventures; others have them in spite of themselves. It happened that the writer of this book belonged to a regiment that seemed to be always in the midst of great experiences. It was, in fact, one of the few regiments that absolutely fought themselves out of existence. It was mustered in a thousand strong; it lost seven hundred and seventy-seven men by death, wounds, and disease. The fragment that was left over was transferred to a cavalry command. When the writer finally escaped from prison, after many months of confinement and many thrilling adventures both in prison and in the army of the enemy, he was mustered out as a "supernumerary officer." His command had ceased to exist. He was literally the last man of the regiment.

He kept a diary every day in the four years of war and adventure. The substance of the facts related here is from its pages; occasionally they are copied just as they are there set down. The book is not a history of great army movements, it is simply a true tale of the thrilling experiences of a subordinate soldier in the midst of great events."

Chateau and Country Life in France

Mary King Waddington
Mary King Waddington was the American daughter of Charles King, ninth president of Columbia University, and the granddaughter of New York Senator Rufus King. She moved to France with her parents in 1871, and three years later married William Waddington, French diplomat and statesman. After Waddington’s death in 1894, Mary published two volumes of memoirs of life as a diplomat’s wife. In 1909 she followed up with Chateau and Country Life in France, which describes her later life in the French countryside. Its chapters tell of chateaux visits, holidays and festivals, and country customs, and are a mix of more formal memoir pieces and sections that read like diary entries or chatty letters to American friends.

Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Volume 03

Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
Memoirs written by Napoleon's private secretary, "a work based on years of intimate friendship and professional association."

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