Best of
American

1913

George Washington's Farewell Address


George Washington - 1913
    His famous farewell address encapsulates a view of the Union, the Constitution, and good citizenship that is an important part of American political thought today.

The Custom of the Country


Edith Wharton - 1913
    As she unfolds the story of Undine Spragg, from New York to Europe, Wharton affords us a detailed glimpse of what might be called the interior décor of this America and its nouveau riche fringes. Through a heroine who is as vain, spoiled, and selfish as she is irresistibly fascinating, and through a most intricate and satisfying plot that follows Undine's marriages and affairs, she conveys a vision of social behavior that is both supremely informed and supremely disenchanted. - Anita Brookner

The Story of My Boyhood and Youth


John Muir - 1913
    Muir recounts in vivid detail the three worlds of his early life: his first eleven years in Scotland; the years 1849–1860 in the central Wisconsin wilderness; and two-and-a-half most inventive years at the University of Wisconsin during that institution’s infancy.

John Barleycorn: Alcoholic Memoirs


Jack London - 1913
    London offers acute generalizations on Barleycorn together with a close narrative of his own drinking career, which was heroic in scale. It is, however, as an exercise in autobiography that his book principally attracts the modern reader. London's life was tragically short but packed with episode and adventure. In John Barleycorn he records his early hardships in Oakland, his experiences as oyster pirate, deep-sea sealer, hobo, Yukon goldminer, student, drop-out, and - ultimately - best-selling author. Long neglected by London partisans (who wish he had never written it) and used against him by critics who would see him as a self-confessed drunk, John Barleycorn deserves to be celebrated for what it is: a classic of American autobiography.

The Collected Poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar


Paul Laurence Dunbar - 1913
    Sixteen of these were found in manuscript form.Paul Laurence Dunbar's work achieved wide recognition in the first part of the twentieth century. The author of six volumes of poetry, as well as novels, librettos, songs, and essays, he was nationally known and accepted by black and white readers alike.As Joanne M. Braxton points out in her substantive introduction to this edition, a reconsideration of Dunbar's work and influence is long overdue: "We reclaim, in Paul Laurence Dunbar, a significant American author whose career transcends race and locality even while he makes use of racialized and regional cultural materials to create an African-American aesthetic and a unique black poetic diction."

The Valley of the Moon


Jack London - 1913
    A road novel 50 years before Kerouac, The Valley of the Moon traces the odyssey of Billy and Saxon Roberts from the labor strife of Oakland at the turn of the century through central and northern California in search of beautiful land they can farm independently.

Uncle Wiggily's Travels


Howard R. Garis - 1913
    Visit us online at www.1stWorldLibrary.ORG - - You know when Uncle Wiggily Longears, the old rabbit gentleman, started out to look for his fortune, he had to travel many weary miles, and many adventures happened to him. Some of those adventures I have told you in the book just before this one, and now I am going to tell you about his travels when he hoped to find a lot of money, so he would be rich. One day, as I told you in the last story in the other book, Uncle Wiggily came to a farm, and there he had quite an adventure with a little boy. And this little boy had on red trousers, because, I guess, his blue ones were in the washtub. Anyhow, he and the rabbit gentleman became good friends.

La Follette's Autobiography: A Personal Narrative of Political Experiences


Robert Marion La Follette - 1913
    La Follette's political life and philosophy is not only a personal history, but in a large measure, a history of the Progressive cause throughout the United States. This is a book for every conscientious citizen. For, as Allan Nevins states in his Introduction, ". . . the battle La Follette led still goes on, and the lessons he instilled still need pondering."