Short Nonfiction Collection, Vol. 086

A scavenger hunt through the early twentieth-century mind, this anthology gathers twenty distinct voices united only by their willingness to wander off the expected path. Here is Aldous Huxley prophesying that democracy would die of boredom, Mark Twain delivering an after-dinner speech with characteristic mischief, and Willa Cather and Christopher Morley reflecting on the lonely craft of writing. Thomas Cole opens his artist's diary, John Burroughs ponders beauty, and Leibniz meditates on how things begin. The collection wades into politics: the mechanics of third parties, the rituals of the House of Commons, a 1904 South Dakota land lottery, and the raw horror of an NAACP anti-lynching poster. A pioneer girl's act of heroism shares space with Poland's Tadeusz Kościuszko. Perhaps most uncanny is the 1918 influenza essay, a century-old document that reads like yesterday's news. Nellie Bly, a Chinese wedding, an enormous skeleton, and a virtual tour of a German fortress round out an anthology that refuses to choose a single lane. For readers who believe curiosity is its own justification.