Arts Podcasts
Librivox: Life and Adventures of Nat Love, The by Love, NatJoin Now to Follow
Nat Love was born a slave, emancipated into abject poverty, grew up riding the range as a cowboy and spent his maturity riding the rails as a Pullman Porter. For me, the most amazing thing about him is that despite the circumstances of his life, which included being owned like a farm animal solely because of the color of his skin and spending later decades living and working as an equal with white coworkers, he was an unrepentant racist! Convinced that the only good Indian was a dead one, and that all Mexicans were "greasers" and/or "bums," he rarely passed up a chance to shoot a member of either group, whether in self-defense or cold blood, and shows no sign of having appreciated the difference. At one point, he fell in love with a Mexican girl but, apparently unable to tolerate this reality, considered her "Spanish." Nat Love was a fascinating character who lived in equally interesting times, and one only wishes his autobiography was much longer and more detailed. by ohsostrange
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Librivox: Ulysses by Joyce, JamesJoin Now to Follow
Still one of the most radical novels of the 20th Century, James Joyce's Ulysses is considered to have ushered in the era of the modern novel. Loosely based on Homer's Odyssey, the book follows Leopold Bloom and a number of other characters through an ordinary day, twenty four hours, in Dublin, on June 16, 1904. The text is dense and difficult, but perfectly suited to an oral reading, filled with language tricks, puns and jokes, stream of consciousness, and bawdiness. NOTE: Because of the nature of this project, there was a bending of usual LibriVox procedures: pub-like background noise was encouraged, as well as group readings; and no editing was required, so in places there may be some accidental variation from the original text ... Listener be warned! (Summary by Hugh McGuire)
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Librivox: Жития Святых, т. 10 - Иуний (Zhitiia Sviatykh, v. 10 - June) by Dimitriĭ, Saint Metropolitan of RostovJoin Now to Follow
Житія и похвалы святыхъ подобятся свѣтлостію звѣздамъ: якоже бо звѣзды положеніемъ на небеси утвержденны суть, всю же поднебесную просвѣщаютъ, тыяжде и отъ Індіанъ зрятся, ни сокрываются отъ скѵѳовъ, землю озаряютъ, и морю свѣтятъ, и плавающихъ корабли управляютъ: ихже именъ аще и не вѣмы множества ради, обаче свѣтлѣй добротѣ ихъ чудимся. Сице и свѣтлость святыхъ, аще и затворены суть мощи ихъ во гробѣхъ, но силы ихъ въ поднебеснѣй земными предѣлы не суть опредѣленны: чудимся тѣхъ житію, и удивляемся славѣ, еюже Богъ угодившыя Ему прославляетъ. [St. Symeon Metaphrastes on the Lives of the Saints, 10th century A. D. This succinct description is found as introduction to each of the 12 volumes of the Church Slavonic Lives.]
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Librivox: Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (Fitzgerald) by Khayyám, OmarJoin Now to Follow
"Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (Persian: رباعیات عمر خیام). The Rubáiyát (Arabic: رباعیات) is a collection of poems, originally written in the Persian language and of which there are about a thousand, attributed to the Persian mathematician and astronomer Omar Khayyám (1048 – 1123). "Rubaiyat" (derived from the Arabic root word for 4) means "quatrains": verses of four lines." (summary from Wikipedia.)
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Librivox: History of the United States, Vol. II by Beard, Charles AustinJoin Now to Follow
Charles Beard was the most influential American historian of the early 20th century. He published hundreds of monographs, textbooks and interpretive studies in both history and political science. He graduated from DePauw University in 1898, where he met and eventually married Mary Ritter Beard, one of the founders of the first greek-letter society for women, Kappa Alpha Theta. Many of his books were written in collaboration with his wife, whose own interests lay in feminism and the labor union movement. In 1921, Charles and Mary Beard published their textbook: History of the United States. A contemporaneous review stated: The authors… assume enough maturity in…students to justify a topical rather than a chronological treatment. They have dealt with movements, have sketched large backgrounds, have traced causes, and have discussed the interrelation of social and economic forces and politics. All this has been directed to the large purpose of helping the student to understand American today in all its national characteristics and as part of world civilization as well..The literary style is exceptionally clear and crisp, and the whole approach…is thought producing. As a textbook or handbook for the average citizen it ranks with very best. The book is divided into 7 parts: THE COLONIAL PERIOD, CONFLICT AND INDEPENDENCE, FOUNDATIONS OF THE UNION AND NATIONAL POLITICS, THE WEST AND JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY, SECTIONAL CONFLICT AND RECONSTRUCTION, NATIONAL GROWTH AND WORLD POLITICS, AND PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRACY AND THE WORLD WAR. (Summary from Wikipedia, Journal of History, and M.L. Cohen)
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Librivox: Offences Against One's Self: Paederasty by Bentham, JeremyJoin Now to Follow
Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) was an English jurist, philosopher, and legal and social reformer. He was a political radical and a leading theorist in Anglo-American philosophy of law. He is best known as an early advocate of utilitarianism and animal rights who influenced the development of liberalism. The essay Offences Against One's Self (c. 1785), argued for the liberalisation of laws prohibiting homosexuality. The essay remained unpublished during Bentham's lifetime for fear of offending public morality. It was finally published for the first time in 1931. (Wikipedia) This recording was catalogued on 28th July 2007, the 40th anniversary of the coming into force in the UK of the Sexual Offences Act 1967, which decriminalised male homosexuality for the first time (though with restrictions).
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Librivox: Gettysburg Address, The (version 4) by Lincoln, AbrahamJoin Now to Follow
The Gettysburg Address is the most famous speech of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln and one of the most quoted speeches in United States history. It was delivered at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on the afternoon of Thursday, November 19, 1863, during the American Civil War, four and a half months after the Union armies defeated the Confederates at the decisive Battle of Gettysburg. (Summary from Wikipedia)
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Librivox: Dream Days by Grahame, KennethJoin Now to Follow
Dream Days is a collection of children's fiction and reminiscences of childhood written by Kenneth Grahame. A sequel to Grahame's 1895 collection The Golden Age (some of its selections feature the same family of five children), Dream Days was first published in 1898 under the imprint John Lane: The Bodley Head. (The first six selections in the book had been previously published in periodicals of the day—in the Yellow Book, the New Review, and in Scribner's Magazine in the United States.) The book is best known for its inclusion of Grahame's classic story The Reluctant Dragon . Like its precursor volume, Dream Days received strong approval from the literary critics of the day. In the decades since, the book has perhaps suffered a reputation as a thinner and weaker sequel to The Golden Age—except for its single hit story. In one modern estimation, both books "paint a convincingly unsentimental picture of childhood, with the adults in these sketches totally out of touch with the real concerns of the young people around them, including their griefs and rages." Its concern is chiefly with the lands of imagination, ranging from a reconnaisance of men of solitude, a disastrous introduction of a girl to the narrator's private castle in the clouds, derring-do on the high seas, and, of course, an encounter with a dragon. Its concluding bittersweet story bids a reluctant farewell to the dream days of childhood. (Summary by Wikipedia and Catharine Eastman)
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Librivox: Short Poetry Collection 038 by VariousJoin Now to Follow
LibriVox’s Short Poetry Collection 038: a collection of 20 public-domain poems.
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Librivox: Civil Rights and Equal Protection Cases 1856-1948 by United States Supreme CourtJoin Now to Follow
Landmark United States Supreme Court decisions focusing on civil rights and equal protection between 1856 and 1948.
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