John S. Shedlock covers the history of what might now be called the keyboard sonata, from Kuhnau's Sonata in B flat from 1695, believed at the time to be the earliest keyboard sonata, up the present day. Along the way, works by Emanuel Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Weber, Schubert, Schumann, Chopin, Brahms, Liszt and others are looked at, along with many musical extracts. - Summary by Jordan
12 episodes
Phänomenologie des Geistes (1807) is Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's most important and widely discussed philosophical work. Hegel's first book, it describes the three-stage dialectical life of Spirit. The title can be translated as either The Phenomenology of Spirit or The Phenomenology of Mind, because the German word Geist has both meanings. Phenomenology was the basis of Hegel's later philosophy and marked a significant development in German idealism after Kant. Focusing on topics in metaphysics, epistemology, physics, ethics, history, religion, perception, consciousness, and political philosophy, The Phenomenology is where Hegel develops his concepts of dialectic (including the Master-slave dialectic), absolute idealism, ethical life, and Aufhebung. The book had a profound effect in Western philosophy, and "has been praised and blamed for the development of existentialism, communism, fascism, death of God theology, and historicist nihilism."
Note, this is the second volume of two.
(Wikipedia)
29 episodes
If you have ever wondered why Spain (and not Japan, which was so so much better positioned to do it) was first to “settle” the Golden State, this book is for you. Professor Chapman has produced a comprehensive and highly entertaining popular history of “the Californias,” beginning with a nod to geography and the native races and carrying on through to the arrival of Old Glory in 1848.
What might in less capable hands have proved a heavy historical loaf to digest is lightened and leavened with the yeast of “interesting incident” throughout. Consider the plight of the newly-appointed Governor of Alta California, Pedro Fages, whose own wife, the fiery Catalan Doña Eulalia Callis, who, when she wasn't giving away to the “naked indians” all of her own clothes (and the Governor's, too) secretly petitioned the authorities in Mexico for his removal from office. The author relates at some length the romantic story of beautiful Conceptión Argüello, who chose to wait faithfully all her life for the return of the rascally Razánov the Russian, with whom she had fallen in love. The tragic conclusion of this affair is touchingly imagined in an extended quote from the famous poem by Bret Harte.(1)
But not all is frivolity. The historical meat is here as well, in breadth and in detail. The author's stated purpose is “to show that California history is important as well as interesting,—that the great Anza expedition of 1775-1776 and the Yuma massacre of 1781 demand inclusion in any comprehensive history of the United States,—that California, while it indeed has a romantic history to tell, has also a great deal more than that to contribute to the cherished traditions of the American people.” (Preface)
(1) Conceptión de Argüello. by Bret Harte, Presidio de San Francisco, 1800.
- Summary by Steven Seitel
36 episodes
The question most frequently asked me since I began my stay in South America has been: "Why do they have so many revolutions there?" Possibly the events recounted in the following pages may help the reader to answer this for himself. I hope that he will share my conviction that militarism has already definitely disappeared from more than half the continent and is slowly becoming less powerful in the remainder. Constitutional traditions, inherited from Spain and Portugal, implanted a tendency toward disintegration; Spanish and Portuguese tyranny bred in the people a distrust of all rulers and governments; the war of independence brought to the front military adventurers; civil disorders were inevitable, and the search for forms of government that should be final and stable has been very painful. On the other hand, the generous impulse that prompted the movement toward independence has grown into an earnest desire for ordered liberty, which is steadily spreading among all classes. Civic capacity is increasing among the body of South Americans and immigration is raising the industrial level. They are slowly evolving among themselves the best form of government for their special needs and conditions.It is hard to secure from the tangle of events called South American history a clearly defined picture. At the risk of repetition I have tried to tell separately the story of each country, because each has its special history and its peculiar characteristics. All of these states have, however, had much in common and it is only in the case of the larger nations that social and political conditions have been described in detail. (Fragment of the Preface)See the original text for the bibliography and numerous illustrations.
44 episodes
This history begins when Pizarro and Almagro, Valdivia and Benalcazar, led their desperadoes across the Isthmus to the conquest, massacre, and enslavement of the prosperous and civilised millions who inhabited the Pacific coast of South America. It ends with the United States opening a way through that same Isthmus for the ships, the trade, the capital of all the world; with American engineers laying railroad iron on the imperial highway of the Incas; with British bondholders forgiving stricken Peru's national debt; with their debtor bravely facing the fact of bankruptcy, and turning over to them all its railways. (from the Preface, available in the source text together with the bibliography and numerous pictures)
30 episodes
A biography of the early feminist writer Margaret Fuller, a groundbreaking journalist and author of Woman in the Nineteenth Century, and one of America's first prominent feminists. The author is Julia Ward Howe, best known for writing "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," as well as numerous other works of prose and poetry, and a leader of the suffragist movement. - Summary by Ciufi Galeazzi
17 episodes
Personal correspondence of Bohemian religious reformer John Huss (Jan Hus) from 1411 when he was exiled from Prague through his death by burning as heretic in 1415 by order of the Council of Constance. These were first published in 1536 by the German Protestant reformer Martin Luther and his introduction is included here. - Summary by Rom Maczka
14 episodes
John Dewey, an early 20th Century American philosopher, psychologist, educational theorist. This project encompasses Part 4 of 4 of his book Human Nature and Conduct, An Introduction to Social Psychology, published in 1922. Dewey's uses the words "HABIT" and "Impulse" as a specialized catch-all words to describe how a person and his/her objective environment interact. This interaction is the basis for moral and ethical judgments. Dewey writes: "All habits are demands for certain kinds of activity; and they constitute the self.” In other places he also asserts that "Habits are Will." In the third part of the book, Dewey describes how we make ethical judgments (Dramatic Rehearsal) on the occasions which call upon the exercise of intelligence, and the relationship among aims, goals, means and ends, and emotions.
In this fourth section he ties together the preceding concepts and conclusions
Part 4: Conclusion
Section I: The Good of Activity
Better and worse; morality a process; evolution and progress; optimism; Epicureanism; making others happy.
Section II: Morals are Human
Humane morals; natural law and morals; place of science.
Section III: What is Freedom?
Elements in freedom; capacity in action; novel possibilities; force of desire.
Section IV: Morality is Social
Conscience and responsibility; social pressure and opportunity; exaggeration of blame; importance of social psychology; category of right; the community of religious symbol.
Soloist supplementary note: Very important but sometimes overlooked is his concept in Part 3 of the book of "Dramatic Rehearsal" which to me means: when we are deliberating over a course of action, we don't just tote up an arithmetic series of "if I do THIS, then THIS will happen, and then THIS will happen, etc. and weigh out the pluses and minuses" as a Utilitarian would do. No, what we do, says Dewey, is that at every step of divining what the future will hold, we examine how we FEEL about the situation. For example, if we're planning a chess move, we don't think to ourselves merely "if I make THIS move, I'll weaken my king side, but I'll gain a pawn" No, instead we think "if I make THIS move, I'll weaken my king side {Dang it all to hecky darn! }, but I'll gain a pawn {Yaaaay! hoorah! }". The force of our subjective and emotive intensity sway the final decisions.
~ Summary by William Allan Jones, Soloist
4 episodes
The Barbary pirates, sometimes called Barbary corsairs or Ottoman corsairs, were Ottoman and Berber pirates and privateers who operated from North Africa. The most famous (or infamous) was Barbarossa. Here Kelley and Lane-Poole give us an unromanticized look at these villains of the seas. The work includes the rise of the Knights Templar and the colonization of Africa by England and France.
22 episodes
In this famous early work of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, he investigates the artistic characteristics of Apollonian (reason) and Dionysian (passion) characteristics in Greek art, specifically in Greek tragedy as it evolved. Then he applies his conclusions about Greek tragedy to the state of modern art, especially modern German art and specifically to the operas of Richard Wagner.
27 episodes
Parkman has been hailed as one of America's first great historians and as a master of narrative history. Numerous translations have spread the books around the world. The American writer and literary critic Edmund Wilson (1895-1972) in his book O Canada (1965), described Parkman’s France and England in North America in these terms: The clarity, the momentum and the color of the first volumes of Parkman’s narrative are among the most brilliant achievements of the writing of history as an art.
Parkman's biases, particularly his attitudes about nationality, race, and especially Native Americans, has generated criticism. The Canadian historian W. J. Eccles harshly criticized what he perceived as Parkman's bias against France and Roman Catholic policies, as well as what he considered Parkman's misuse of French language sources. However, Parkman's most severe detractor was the American historian Francis Jennings, an outspoken and controversial critic of the European colonization of North America, who went so far as to characterize Parkman's work as "fiction" and Parkman himself as a "liar".
Unlike Jennings and Eccles, many modern historians have found much to praise in Parkman's work even while recognizing his limitations. Calling Jennings' critique "vitriolic and unfair," the historian Robert S. Allen has said that Parkman's history of France and England in North America "remains a rich mixture of history and literature which few contemporary scholars can hope to emulate". The historian Michael N. McConnell, while acknowledging the historical errors and racial prejudice in Parkman's book The Conspiracy of Pontiac, has said: "...it would be easy to dismiss Pontiac as a curious perhaps embarrassing artifact of another time and place. Yet Parkman's work represents a pioneering effort; in several ways he anticipated the kind of frontier history now taken for granted...." Parkman's masterful and evocative use of language remains his most enduring and instructive legacy.
This is Vol 3 of Parkman's series "France and England in North America." The LibriVox recording does not include footnotes, many of which are extended quotations from original French sources: See project Gutenberg http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/40143 for footnotes. - Summary by Summary adapted from Wikipedia by Karen Merline
Part 1: Pioneers of France in the New World
Part 2: The Jesuits in North America in the 17th Century
Part 4: The Old Régime in Canada
Part 5: Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV
Part 6: Montcalm and Wolfe
Part 7: A Half Century of Conflict
30 episodes
This 1904 history of slavery in the southeastern United States reflects the state of knowledge at that time, of course. The text contains so many extensive quotations (well footnoted along with an extensive bibliography) that it was unfeasible to indicate them as quotes in reading the text. The author was a professor of history and English at Claremont College, a North Carolina school that closed in 1917. A resource of more current thinking may be had at the well-regarded 1988 Dictionary Of Afro-American Slavery. - Summary by David Wales
8 episodes
