Showing results by narrator "Laura Orlando" in All Categories

Emily Post has become synonymous with proper etiquette and manners. Etiquette in Society, in Business, in Politics, and at Home (1922) deals with manners and social rules, and became a best seller, with frequent updated editions to keep up with social changes. Emily became a popular columnist and radio guest due to the book’s success.

The Gallic War is Julius Caesar's autobiographical diary of the wars in what is now France, Belgium, and parts of Britain, Germany, and Switzerland, in which he describes the battles that took place from 58 to 51 BCE when he fought the Germanic and Celtic peoples that opposed Roman conquest. Modern-day Provence and Languedoc-Roussillon were already under Roman control, so Caesar’s Gaul referred to the regions that the Romans had not yet conquered. The book comprises seven parts and chronicles the wars against the Helvetii, Belgae, Britons, Eburones, Suebi, Veneti, and more.

This best-selling novel by Hannah Webster Foster (1758-1840) is a fictionalized account of the death of an upper class woman after giving birth to a stillborn, illegitimate child at a tavern. Published anonymously in 1797, it did not appear under Foster’s name until after her death. It was a huge success in its time and had eight reprints between 1824 and 1828.

Assyria was a Mesopotamian kingdom which became a brutal empire of the ancient Near East and the Levant. This encyclopaedic text covers the lay of the land, the capital, and other cities, plus the language, cuneiform writing, customs, religion, arts, and architecture of Assyria. The city state of Ashur dates back to about the 25th century BCE. The history deals with the Assyrian conquests of Anatolia, Babylonia, the Iranian plateau, and the Levant, until it suffered a series of defeats at the hand of the Medes, Persians, and Babylonians.

Gerald of Wales, also called Giraldus Cambrensis or Gerald De Barri ( c. 1146-c. 1223), was the archdeacon of Brecknock and a historian whose accounts of late 12th century Britain and France contain vivid anecdotes about the Christian church, the universities of Paris and Oxford, and about notable clerics. His work, Topographia Hiberniae, is an arresting account of his travels in Ireland, with vivid descriptions of the island’s fauna and flora and its natural beauty.

Virginia Woolf's second novel is both a love story and a subversive comedy which questions the role of women in society. Contemplating their futures, five single people in their late 20s and early 30s are immobilized by indecision. Questions like who, when, and whether to marry, the changing roles of men and women in a rapidly changing world, and matters of independence versus family obligations come to the fore.

In Civilization and Its Discontents, Freud explores the tension between the individual’s desire for unbridled freedom and the expectations of society. Explaining his view of the basic friction between civilization and the individual, he maintains that the conflict stems from the individual's quest for instinctive freedom versus civilization's demand for conformity and the repression of instincts.

George Soper (1870-1948) was a sanitation engineer who tracked down Mary Mallon, or Typhoid Mary (1869-1938), a cook who was an asymptomatic carrier of typhoid responsible for at least 54 cases with four deaths in nine different epidemics. Soper was called in when a landlord in Long Island struggled to trace the source of an outbreak in 1906. Soper’s every attempt to reason with Mary was met by denial and a refusal to cooperate. She was arrested by the New York Health Department and placed in a detention hospital on March 19, 1907.

Reform or Revolution was an influential pamphlet published by Marxist Rosa Luxemburg in 1899. In it, she argues that a revolution is necessary in order to transform a capitalist society into a socialist one. It was a strong criticism of German socialist thinker Eduard Bernstein.

The British advocate for women’s rights Emmeline Pankhurst (1858-1928), was the founder of the Women's Social and Political Union. In this 1913 speech in the US, Pankhurst expresses her thoughts about attaining women’s suffrage. Her main point is that a militant element was necessary to persuade the British Parliament to act.

An inter-dynastic dispute lead to an invitation to the English king Henry II to intervene in Ireland, and an invasion followed through the east coast town of Wexford. This intervention was the first step in the colonization of Ireland by the Anglo-Normans of the English crown. Gerald’s account of the coming of the Normans in AD 1166-1185 was the first history book on Ireland penned by a non-Irish author. Most historians of the British Isles do not considered the book as accurate, truthful history, but rather as a poetical fiction motivated by family concerns.

Jacob's Room was Virginia Woolf’s third novel. It is a character study about Jacob Flanders and is narrated through the impressions of other characters about Jacob. The narrative mainly unfolds through the two women, Clara Durrant and Florinda, and the book is considered an important modernist text.

The author examines the theories and assumptions on which the criminal laws are based and points out their flaws. The work deals with inter alia the treatment of the insane, banishment, origin of cell prisons, and penal servitude. It includes passages on monotony, the instinct of retaliation, the classification of crimes and offenders, and directions of reform.