The Future in America: A Search After Realities is a 1906 travel essay by H. G. Wells recounting his impressions from the first of half a dozen visits he would make to the United States. The book consists of fifteen chapters and a concluding "envoy". Wells describes the United States as "a great and energetic English-speaking population strewn across a continent so vast as to make it seem small and thin...caught by the upward sweep of that great...

Perhaps all religions, unless the flaming onset of Mohammedanism be an exception, have dawned imperceptibly upon the world. A little while ago and the thing was not, and then suddenly it has been found in existence, and already in a state of diffusion. People have begun to hear of the new belief first here and then there. It is interesting, for example, to trace how Christianity drifted into the consciousness of the Roman world. But when a religion...

The truth is, my wife, like all the rest of the world, cares not a fig for my philosophical jabber. Thus wrote Melville in 1856, in the house where he had penned 'Moby-Dick" some six years earlier (Arrowhead in Pittsfield, Massachusetts). An allegorical tale that reveals a very unsettling home life and professional life for this American genius, who by the time this story was published was nearly forgotten.

In the 1890s and for years thereafter, America reverberated with the name of the "notorious Anarchist," feminist, revolutionist, and agitator, Emma Goldberg. A Russian Jewish immigrant at the age of 17, she moved by her own efforts from seamstress in a clothing factory to internationally known radical lecturer, writer, editor, and friend of the oppressed. This book is a collection of her remarkably penetrating essays, far in advance of their time,

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Excerpt: "Look at all this class of comfortable people. They don't see things the same as I do, an' I don't know why they should. They're comfortable themselves. It stands to reason they're not goin' to think about such things. They've been brought up to believe the world was made for them. They never see no other people but their own sort; same as workin' people never see no other but workin' people."

In Exotics and Retrospectives, Lafcadio Hearn plays the role not only of tour guide, but also dreamscaper. Whether through his narrative recounting of Japanese customs and traditional tales, or while sharing his personal observations and flights of fancy, Hearn's graceful and poetic prose enables the reader to enter a foreign world. Covering subjects from Buddhism to beauty to the color blue to being, he gently, honestly, and humorously lays bare...

Lafcadio Hearn's books have charmed and captivated readers, just as the exotic subjects about which he has written have captivated him. "Gleanings in the Buddha-Fields" presents more Hearn magic as he enters into the spirit of Buddhism as though he were born into it. This collection of stories, subtitled "Studies of Hand and Soul in the Far East," takes the reader on a journey into the soul of Hearn's adopted land as no other writer-especially a non-Japanese...

Excerpt: "Most of the letters in this volume were written by Theodore Roosevelt to his children during a period of more than twenty years. A few others are included that he wrote to friends or relatives about the children. He began to write to them in their early childhood, and continued to do so regularly till they reached maturity. Whenever he was separated from them, in the Spanish War, or on a hunting trip, or because they were at school, he sent...

The Bishop of Princhester has come to doubt the Trinity, as well as a number of other things relating to the Creed. Not only this, but he has come to realize that there are others within the church with doubts-some who even doubt the existence of God. Although the Bishop believes fervently in God, his disagreements with the dogma, creating an inner turmoil that throws his life into chaos. H. G. Wells, "The Father of Science Fiction", was also a staunch...

Excerpt: "It is somewhat disturbing to one who visits the West for the first time with the purpose of writing of it, to read on the back of a railroad map, before he reaches Harrisburg, that Texas "is one hundred thousand square miles larger than all the Eastern and Middle States, including Maryland and Delaware." It gives him a sharp sensation of loneliness, a wish to apologize to some one, and he is moved with a sudden desire to get out at the first...