The James Logan Courier

Dorothy Leigh Sayers (Oxford, 13 June 1893 – Witham, 17 December 1957) was a renowned British author, translator, student of classical and modern languages, and Christian humanist. She is perhaps best known for her Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries, a series of novels and short stories featuring an English aristocrat who solves numerous mysteries as an amateur sleuth. His courting of and ultimate marriage with Harriet Vane feature prominently throughout the series.

Read The Lost Tools of Learning by Dorothy Sayers


Dorothy Sayers

Diogenes Laërtius, the biographer of the Greek philosophers, is supposed by some to have received his surname from the town of Laerte in Cilicia, and by others from the Roman family of the Laërtii.

Read The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, by Diogenes Laertius and translated by C.D. Yonge, free from classicpersuasion.org

Henry John Kaiser (May 9, 1882-August 24, 1967) was an American industrialist who became known as the father of modern American shipbuilding. Beginning as a cashier in a dry-goods shop in Utica, New York, Kaiser moved many times as he pursued the photographic and hardware businesses, finally settling in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. In 1912 he began a road paving business in Washington and British Columbia. The Henry J. Kaiser Company, Ltd. was established in Vancouver, B.C., in 1914. In 1921 Kaiser won his first California paving contract and established headquarters in Oakland.


Click the picture to watch Henry Kaiser sign a contract with autoworkers in this 1946 Universal newsreel, along with other news stories of the day, streaming in 256k MPEG 4. For more formats and information, click here.


Henry J. Kaiser perches above Hawai'i Kai in April 1963, his suburban development in Honolulu. Kaiser spent much of his later years developing the urban landscape of O'ahu.

Jack London, probably born John Griffith Chaney (January 12, 1876 - November 22, 1916) was an American author who wrote The Call of the Wild and over fifty other books. A pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction, he was one of the first Americans to make a huge financial success from writing.

Read The Sea Wolf by Jack London, one of 50 of his works available at Project Gutenberg.


Click on the picture above to watch "The Fighter", a feature film version of Jack London's story, streaming in 256k MPEG4 from the Internet Archive. In the film,released in 1953, starring Richard Conte and directed by Herbert Kline,a young Mexican boxer uses his winnings to buy guns to avenge his family's murder. Click here for more format choices and information.


Jack London

Selkirk, Scotland (March 31, 1844 - July 20, 1912) was a prolific Scots man of letters. He was a poet, novelist, and literary critic, and contributor to anthropology. He now is best known as the collector of folk and fairy tales.

The Andrew Lang lecture at St Andrews university are named for him.


Read Grass of Parnassus by Andrew Lang, one of 68 of his works available free from Project Gutenberg.

Asher Ginsberg (1856, Skvyra - 1927), also known by the pen name Ahad Ha'am (also: Achad Ha'am, Echad Ha'am etc.) (Hebrew: one of the people, compare with L.L. Zamenhof's Unuel), was one of the great pre-state Zionist thinkers.

Read Ahad Ha'am's 1897 essay "Jewish State and Jewish Problem."


Ahad Ha'am

Hugh Lawson White (October 30, 1773-April 10, 1840) was a prominent American politician during the first third of the 19th century. He succeeded General Jackson and served in the United States Senate, representing Tennessee, from 1825 until his resignation in 1840, and was a Whig candidate for President in 1836.


Hugh Lawson White

Pedro Calderón de la Barca (January 17, 1600 – May 25, 1681), was an important dramatist of the Spanish Golden Age.
Calderón was born in Madrid, Spain. His mother, who was of Flemish descent, died in 1610; his father, who was secretary to the treasury, died in 1615. Calderón was educated at the Jesuit College in Madrid, the Colegio Imperial, with a view to taking orders and accepting a family living; abandoning this project, he studied law at Salamanca.

Read Life Is a Dream by Pedro Calderón de la Barca, one of four of his works available free from Project Gutenberg.


Pedro Calderón de la Barca

William Blake (November 28, 1757–August 12, 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Though largely unrecognised during his lifetime, today Blake's work, produced in partnership with his wife Catherine, is widely known. According to Northrop Frye, who undertook a study of Blake's entire poetic opus, his prophetic poems form "what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the [English] language". Others have praised Blake's visual artistry, in particular his engravings: "[Blake] is far and away the greatest artist Britain has ever produced". In 1957 a small memorial was erected in memory of him and his wife.

Read Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake, one of two collections of his work available free from Project Gutenberg.


William Blake

James Branch Cabell (April 14, 1879 - May 5, 1958) was an American author of fantasy fiction and belles lettres. Cabell's surname is often mispronounced "Ka-BELL", he himself pronounced it "CAB-ble". To remind an editor of the correct pronunciation, Cabell composed this rhyme: "Tell the rabble my name is Cabell."

Read Jurgen, A Comedy of Justice by James Branch Cabell, one of a dozen works availble free from Project Gutenberg.


James Branch Cabell

Matthew Arnold (24 December 1822 – 15 April 1888) was an English poet and cultural critic, who worked as an inspector of schools. He was the son of Thomas Arnold, the famed headmaster of Rugby School who was celebrated in the novel Tom Brown's Schooldays.

Read Culture and Anarchy by Matthew Arnold, one of four of his works available free from Project Gutenberg.

Nicholas Vachel Lindsay (November 10, 1879 – December 5, 1931) was an American poet. Being an early advocate of jazz poetry, he became known as the "Prairie Troubador."

Read The Art of the Moving Picture by Vachel Lindsay, one of four of his poetry collections available free from Project Gutenberg.


Vachel Lindsey in 1912

John Dewey (October 20, 1859 – June 1, 1952) was an American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer, whose thoughts and ideas have been greatly influential in the United States and around the world. He, along with Charles Sanders Peirce and William James, is recognized as one of the founders of the philosophical school of Pragmatism. He also is known as the father of functional psychology; he was a leading representative of the progressive movement in U.S. education during the first half of the 20th century; and he was a contributing editor of the Encyclopeadia for Unified Science, a project of the logical empiricists that was organised by Otto Neurath.

Read John Dewey's book, Democracy and Education: an introduction to the philosophy of education, free from Project Gutenberg


John Dewey

Gaius Sallustius Crispus, simply known as Sallust, (86-34 BC). He was a Roman historian, belonging to a well-known plebeian family, and was born at Amiternum in the country of the Sabines.

Read Conspiracy of Catiline and the Jurgurthine War, by Sallust, free from Project Gutenberg.


This statue of Sallust sits near the Austrian Parliment

Eddie Rickenbacker (October 8, 1890 – July 27, 1973) greatly influenced the U.S. in the Twentieth Century, first as an automobile race car driver and automotive designer, then as a hero of World War I, and later as a government consultant in military matters and a pioneer in air transportation. Rickenbacker participated in many of the most historical events of the Twentieth Century and was known for surviving many serious accidents, his exceptional ambition and personal character, and his service as a American fighter pilot in World War I. During his lifetime, Rickenbacker collaborated with some of the most influential civilian and military leaders of the century. He understood his enemy from friendships with former German fighter aces, Soviet military leaders, and American politicians. He had keen insight into technology, vision for future improvements, and strong principles and social values. Among other events, he participated in or observed:

• the early development of automobiles and auto racing
  
• air combat in World War I
  
• the founding of the commercial aviation industry
  
• Armistice Day on the Western Front
  
• the Hindenburg explosion

Watch part one of the 1939 serial Ace Drummond, a 13-part film based on the comic strip character Ace Drummond, created by WWI flying ace Eddie Rickenbacker, free from the Internet Archive.


Eddie Rickenbacker

Baltasar Gracián y Morales (January 8, 1601 - December 6, 1658), Spanish prose writer, was born in Belmonte, near Calatayud (Aragon).
The son of a doctor, in his childhood Gracián lived with his uncle, who was a priest. He studied at a Jesuit school in Zaragoza from 1616 to 1619 and at the age of 18 became a novice. He studied philosophy at the College of Calatayud in 1621 and 1623 and theology in Zaragoza. He was ordained in 1627 and took his final vows in 1635.

Read Baltasar Gracian's Art of Worldly Wisdom, free from sacred-texts.com.


Baltasar Gracian

William Edwards Deming (October 14, 1900 - December 20, 1993) was an American statistician, college professor, author, lecturer, and consultant. Deming is widely credited with improving production in the United States during World War II, although he is perhaps best known for his work in Japan. There, from 1950 onward he taught top management how to improve design (and thus service), product quality, testing and sales (the latter through global markets). Deming made a significant contribution to Japan becoming renowned for producing innovative high-quality products. Deming is regarded as having had more impact upon Japanese manufacturing and business than any other individual not of Japanese heritage.

Visit the W. Edwards Deming Institute to learn more


W. Edwards Deming

Agnes Repplier (April 1, 1855–November 15, 1950) was an American essayist born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her essays are esteemed for their scholarship and wit.

Read more about Agnes Repplier at the University of Pennsylvania Library website.

Read Americans and Others by Agnes Repplier, one of five of her works available free from openlibrary.org.

André Paul Guillaume Gide (November 22, 1869 – February 19, 1951) was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1947. Gide's career spanned from the symbolist movement to the advent of anticolonialism in-between the two World Wars.

Read André Gide's novel Isabelle, in French, one of two of his works available free from Project Gutenberg


André Gide

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (15 January 1809 – 19 January 1865) was a French economist and socialist philosopher who was the first individual to call himself an "anarchist" and is considered among the first anarchist thinkers. He was a workingman, a printer, who taught himself to read Latin so as to print books in that language well. Proudhon is most famous for his assertion of "Property is theft!", in his missive What is Property? Or, an Inquiry into the Principle of Right and Government with the original title: Qu'est-ce que la propriété? Recherche sur le principe du droit et du gouvernement, which was his first major work, published in 1840.

Read The Philosophy of Misery by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, one of two of his works available free from Project Gutenberg


Pierre Joseph Proudhon

Marcel-Valentin-Louis-Eugène-Georges Proust (July 10, 1871 – November 18, 1922) was a French intellectual, novelist, essayist and critic, best known as the author of In Search of Lost Time (in French À la recherche du temps perdu, also translated previously as Remembrance of Things Past), a monumental work of twentieth-century fiction consisting of seven volumes published over 14 years (the last three volumes were published posthumously).

Read Swann's Way, volume one of Remembrance of Things Past, by Marcel Proust, one of ten of his works available from Project Gutenberg


Marcel Proust

José Ortega y Gasset (May 9, 1883 - October 18, 1955) was a Spanish philosopher.
Born in Madrid, Ortega was first schooled by the Jesuit Fathers of San Estanislao in Miraflores del Palo, Málaga (1891-1897). He attended the University of Deusto, Bilbao (1897-98) and the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters at the Complutense University of Madrid (1898-1904), receiving a doctorate in Philosophy. From 1905 to 1907, he continued his studies in Germany at Leipzig, Nuremberg, Cologne, Berlin and, above all Marburg. At Marburg, he was influenced by the neo-Kantianism of Hermann Cohen and Paul Natorp, among others.

Read José Ortega y Gasset's book, Revolt of the Masses, free from www.4literature.net.

Victor-Marie Hugo (February 26, 1802 – May 22, 1885) was a novelist, playwright, essayist and statesman, recognized as the most influential Romantic writer of the 19th century. His best-known works are the novels Les Misérables and Notre-Dame de Paris (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame). Poetry was another of his vocations: among many volumes, Les Contemplations and La Légende des siècles stand particularly high in critical esteem, and Hugo is often identified as the greatest French poet. His works are filled with great power, abundant imagination and beautiful words that become huge features of his works. Furthermore, the complicated as well as touching plots are also the main characteristics that captivate readers' hearts.

Read The Man Who Laughs by Victor Hugo, one of 27 of his works available in French and English free from Project Gutenberg.


Heroic Bust of Victor Hugo by August Rodin, cast in bronze in the 1890s.

American author George Arnold was born in New York City, June 24,1834 and died at Strawberry Farms, New Jersey, November 3, 1865.

While he was still an infant his parents moved to Illinois, but in 1849 returned east to Strawberry Farms. He showed a talent for drawing and joined the studio of a portrait painter in New York. He soon abandoned the idea of becoming an artist, and instead became a writer, contributing to periodicals such as " Vanity Fair," the " Leader," writing stories, poems, sketches, and art criticisms. Some of his poems are remarkably sweet. He was best known during his lifetime as the author of the "McArone" papers, which established his reputation as a humorist. These were begun in "Vanity Fair " in 1860, and continued there and in other papers until his death, and was also the author of several biographical works. During the civil war Mr. Arnold did military duty for a long time at one of the forts on Staten Island. His poems were collected and edited, with a memoir, by William Winter, appearing in two volumes (1867-'68), afterward consolidated in one. The "Jolly Old Pedagogue" is his best-known poem.

Read "Why Thomas Was Discharged," a short story by George Arnold, in Stories By American Authors, available free from Project Gutenberg.

Washington Irving (April 3, 1783 – November 28, 1859) was an American author of the early 19th century. He is perhaps best known for his short stories, his most famous being The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip van Winkle (both appearing in The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon), but he was a prolific writer of essays, biographies, and other forms as well. He and James Fenimore Cooper were the first American writers to earn acclaim in Europe, and Irving is said to have mentored authors such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Edgar Allan Poe.


Washington Irving Click the video screen to watch an 1889 film version of Washington Irving's Rip Van Winkle, streaming in 256k MPEG. According to Wilford B. Wolf's review posted at the Internet Archive, the film is "A series of short (about 20-30 sec) scenes that depict the Irving classic "Rip Van Winkle". The first two parts appear to be shot in Edison's studio in New York, which opened up to allow in natural sunlight. The remaining reels, where Van Winkle leaves with the dwarves and drinks to oblivion, appear to be shot outside."

For more format choices and information, click here.

Read Washington Irving's The Adventures of Captain Bonneville, U. S. A., in the Rocky Mountains and the Far West, one of 18 of his works available from Project Gutenberg

Colette was the pen name of the French novelist Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (January 28, 1873

Read Colette's Barks and Purrs, one of three of her books available free from Project Gutenberg.

James Anthony Froude (Froude rhymes with rood) (April 23, 1818 – October 20, 1894) was an English historian. He was the brother of the Anglo-Catholic polemicist Richard Hurrell Froude and of William Froude, the engineer and naval architect.

Read James A. Froude's Froudacity:West Indian Fables, one of six of his works available free from Project Gutenberg.


Caricature of Froude from Punch, December 30 1882, page 303.
Artwork by Edward Linley Sambourne

Christopher Morley (5 May 1890–28 March 1957) was an American journalist, novelist, and poet.

Read Christopher Morely's 1919 novel, The Haunted Bookshop, one of eight of his works available free from Project Gutenberg.


Christopher Morley