Short Nonfiction Collection Vol. 012

Fifteen voices from the past, speaking to the present. This collection gathers essays, speeches, and reports that span humor, history, politics, science, medicine, nature, finance, cooking, film, and religion, proof that the best ideas travel well beyond their era. Some of these pieces made empires; others just made people laugh. A few explain the cosmos; others simply explain how to boil an egg. What binds them is the impulse to observe, to argue, to illuminate. You'll hear orators who changed the course of nations, humorists who skewered the absurdities of their age, and thinkers working out ideas that we still grapple with today. Open this collection for the serendipity of it: the chance discovery, the unexpected insight, the voice that speaks exactly to the question you didn't know you were asking. For readers who believe the dead have plenty to teach the living.