Reference Books

“... the ideals and methods which are dynamic in our institutions of higher learning are false. They are false to the students, false to the social purpose which nourishes them, false to the inward nature of education itself. They are false because they are irrelevant. And they are irrelevant...

Two decades ago the words “East Side” called up a vague and alarming picture of something strange and alien: a vast crowded area, a foreign city within our own, for whose conditions we had no concern. Aside from its exploiters, political and economic, few people had any definite knowledge of...

If there be any truth in the view that our philosophical theories grow out of our circumstances, it cannot be doubted that the philosophy of change, sometimes optimistically called progress, is curiously appropriate to Europe. The intimate juxtaposition of small areas of mountain and plateau, of...

In this book I have endeavored to tell of modern shore whaling as I have seen it during the past eight years while collecting and studying cetaceans for the American Museum of Natural History. This work carried me twice around the world, as well as northward on two expeditions to Alaska, and...

Marriage ought to be consummated as the result of mutual love and esteem, and not for the purpose of simply gratifying the desires of our lower nature. This last consideration is, it must be acknowledged, a controlling one with a great many people, and marriages contracted in this manner are not...

Of the three English writers whose work has become a portion of all Political Economy, Malthus is the second in time and in honour. His services to general theory are at least equal to Ricardo’s; and his full illustration of one particular detail will rank with the best work of Adam Smith.

By Slavery I mean Domestic Slavery, or that of a servant to a master. A late ingenious Writer well observes, “The variety of forms in which Slavery appears, makes it almost impossible to convey a just notion of it, by way of definition. There are however certain properties which have accompanied...

Let there be, then, no coercion established in society, and the common law of gravity prevailing, the sexes will fall into their proper places.Mary Wollstonecraft.

The reclamation and exploitation of waste products for a variety of industrial uses constitute one of the most fascinating and increasingly important developments in modern industry. It is a subject of which very little is known outside privileged circles, and the possibilities of which are but...

The very name of Madeira (or island of timber, as the word signifies) brings to the minds of most people a suggestion of luxuriant vegetation flourishing in a damp, enervating climate. Such, indeed, was my own mental picture of Madeira before my first visit to the island. I expected to find every...