Showing results by narrator "Lawrence Skinner" in All Categories

"Little Wars" is a set of rules for playing with toy soldiers. Its full title is "Little Wars: a game for boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty". "Little Wars" includes fairly simple rules for infantry, cavalry, and naval artillery in the form of a toy 4.7 inch gun that launched projectiles, usually small wooden dowels to knock down enemy soldiers. In addition to its being a war game, the book hints at several philosophical aspects of war. The book is written in a whimsical style and gives a description of the game from the view of one of the generals in the battle bombastically relating his memoirs.

"Over the Top" (1917) is a World War I memoir by Arthur Guy Empey. From the Foreword: During sixteen years of "roughing it", knocking around the world, I have had ample opportunity of studying, at close range, many different peoples, their ideals, their hopes and principles. Through this I have become convinced of the nobility, truth, and justice of the Allies' cause, and know their fight to be our fight, because it espouses the principles of the United States of America, democracy, justice, and liberty.

"The Battle of Life: A Love Story" is a novella by Charles Dickens, first published in 1846. It is the fourth of his five "Christmas Books". The setting is an English village that stands on the site of an historic battle. Some characters refer to the battle as a metaphor for the struggles of life, hence the title. "The Battle of Life" is the only one of the five Christmas Books that has no supernatural or explicitly religious elements. (One scene takes place at Christmas time, but it is not the final scene.)

"The Kama Sutra" is an ancient Indian Hindu text written by Vatsyayana. It is widely considered to be the standard work on human sexual behaviour in Sanskrit literature. A portion of the work consists of practical advice on sexual intercourse. It is largely in prose, with many inserted anustubh poetry verses. "Kama" which is one of the four goals of Hindu life, means desire including sexual desire the latter being the subject of the textbook, and "sutra" literally means a thread or line that holds things together.

"Treasure Island" is an adventure novel by Robert Louis Stevenson, narrating a tale of "buccaneers and buried gold". Treasure Island is traditionally considered a coming-of-age story, and is noted for its atmosphere, characters, and action. It is also noted as a wry commentary on the ambiguity of morality unusual for children’s literature. It is one of the most frequently dramatized of all novels.

The novel takes place in the Netherlands and is a colorful fictional portrait of early 19th-century Dutch life, as well as a tale of youthful honor. The book's title refers to the beautiful silver skates to be awarded to the winner of the ice-skating race Hans Brinker hopes to enter. The book is also notable for popularizing the story of the little Dutch boy who plugs a dike with his finger.

"Sons and Lovers" is a famous novel by D. H. Lawrence. The refined daughter of a "good old burgher family", Gertrude Coppard meets a rough-hewn miner, Walter Morel, at a Christmas dance and falls into a whirlwind romance characterized by physical passion. But soon after her marriage to Walter, she realizes the difficulties of living off his meagre salary in a rented house. The couple fight and drift apart and Walter retreats to the pub after work each day.

"Chancellorsville and Gettysburg" (1882) is a war memoir by Abner Doubleday. From the preface: In writing this narrative, which relates to the decisive campaign which freed the Northern States from invasion, it may not be out of place to state what facilities I have had for observation in the fulfilment of so important a task. I can only say that I was, to a considerable extent, an actor in the scenes I describe, and knew the principal leaders on both sides, in consequence of my association with them at West Point, and, subsequently, in the regular army.

"White Fang" (1906) is a novel by Jack London and the name of the book's eponymous character, a wild wolfdog. The story takes place in Yukon Territory and the Northwest Territories, Canada, during the 1890s Klondike Gold Rush and details White Fang's journey to domestication. Much of "White Fang" is written from the viewpoint of the titular canine character, enabling London to explore how animals view their world and how they view humans. "White Fang" examines the violent world of wild animals and the equally violent world of humans.

"The First Men in the Moon" tells the story of a journey to the moon undertaken by the two protagonists, a businessman narrator, Mr. Bedford, and an eccentric scientist, Mr. Cavor. Bedford and Cavor discover that the moon is inhabited by a sophisticated extra-terrestrial civilisation of insect-like creatures they call "Selenites".

"The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" (1892) by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is a collection of twelve short stories. The stories are related in first-person narrative from Watson's point of view. In general the stories in "The Adventures of Sherlock Holme"s identify, and try to correct, social injustices. Holmes is portrayed as offering a new, fairer sense of justice.

"The First Battle of Bull Run" (the name used by Union forces), also known as the "First Battle of Manassas" (the name used by Confederate forces), was fought on July 21, 1861 in Prince William County, Virginia, just north of the city of Manassas and about 25 miles west-southwest of Washington, D.C. It was the first major battle of the American Civil War. The Union's forces were slow in positioning themselves, allowing Confederate reinforcements time to arrive by rail. Each side had about 18,000 poorly trained and poorly led troops in their first battle.

"Sense and Sensibility" is a novel by Jane Austen, and was her first published work when it appeared in 1811 under the pseudonym "A Lady". A work of romantic fiction, "Sense and Sensibility" is set in southwest England between 1792 and 1797, and portrays the life and loves of the Dashwood sisters, Elinor and Marianne. The novel follows the young ladies to their new home, a meagre cottage on a distant relative's property, where they experience love, romance and heartbreak. The philosophical resolution of the novel is ambiguous: the reader must decide whether sense and sensibility have truly merged.

"The Lost World" describes an expedition to a plateau in South America where prehistoric creatures including dinosaurs still survive. This book is a part of the Professor Challenger Series by Doyle. Professor Challenger is an aggressive, hot-tempered, dominating figure, and also a pretentious and self-righteous scientific jack-of-all-trades.

"Conquest Over Time" (1956) is a science fiction story by Michael Shaara. Excerpt: "Now this here planet," he said cautiously, "is whacky in a lot of ways. First of all they call it Mert. Just plain Mert. And they live in houses strictly from Dickens, all carriages, no sewers, narrow streets, stuff like that." But that wasn't all… Travis, in reaching Diomed III before any others, found himself waging a one-man fight against more than this; he was bucking the strangest way of life you have ever heard of!

"The Call of the Wild" is an adventure novel by Jack London. It was published in 1903 and set in Yukon, Canada during the 1890s Klondike Gold Rush, when strong sled dogs were in high demand. The central character of the novel is a dog named Buck. The story opens at a ranch in Santa Clara Valley, California, when Buck is stolen from his home and sold into service as a sled dog in Alaska. He becomes progressively feral in the harsh environment, where he is forced to fight to survive and dominate other dogs. By the end, he sheds the veneer of civilization, and relies on primordial instinct and learned experience to emerge as a leader in the wild.

Artist Bio Author:
Jack London (1876-1916) was an American novelist, journalist, and social activist, one of the first fiction writers obtaining celebrity and a fortune. His most famous novel is "The Call of the Wild".

"The Communist Manifesto" (originally "Manifesto of the Communist Party") is an 1848 political pamphlet by German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Commissioned by the Communist League and originally published in London just as the revolutions of 1848 began to erupt, the Manifesto was later recognized as one of the world's most influential political manuscripts.

"Robinson Crusoe" is a novel by Daniel Defoe. It was published under the full title "The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Of York, Mariner: Who lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an un-inhabited Island on the Coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perished but himself. With An Account how he was at last as strangely deliver'd by Pyrates".

"The Lone Star Ranger" is a Western novel that takes place in Texas, the Lone Star State, and several main characters are Texas Rangers, a famous band of highly capable law enforcement officers. It follows the life of Buck Duane, a man who becomes an outlaw and then redeems himself in the eyes of the law.

The story begins in fictional St. Petersburg, Missouri, on the shore of the Mississippi. Huckleberry "Huck" Finn and his friend, Tom Sawyer, have each come into a considerable sum of money as a result of their earlier adventures. Huck is placed under the guardianship of the Widow Douglas, who, together with her stringent sister, Miss Watson, are attempting to "sivilize" him and teach him religion. Finding civilized life confining, his spirits are raised somewhat when Tom Sawyer helps him to escape one night past Miss Watson's slave Jim, to meet up with Tom's gang of self-proclaimed "robbers."