Best of
Non-Fiction

1954

The Art of Eating


M.F.K. Fisher - 1954
    Fisher, whose wit and fulsome opinions on food and those who produce it, comment upon it, and consume it are as apt today as they were several decades ago, when she composed them. Why did she choose food and hunger she was asked, and she replied, 'When I write about hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth, and the love of it . . . and then the warmth and richness and fine reality of hunger satisfied.

The Temple Tiger and More Man-Eaters of Kumaon


Jim Corbett - 1954
    These stories maintain, perhaps even supercede, the high standard of the earlier classic collection. Corbett saves his best story of all for the long concluding chapter in this volume, describing, in The Talla Des Man-Eater, how he embarked on what he feared might be a fatal last test of skill and endurance. As always, he writes with an acute awareness of all jungle sights and sounds, choosing words charged with a great love of humanity, birds, and animals. His calm and straightforward modesty heightens the excitement and suspense of these experiences, in which he continuously risks his life to free the Indian tarai of dangerous man-eaters.

The Family Nobody Wanted


Helen Grigsby Doss - 1954
    She writes of the way the "unwanted" feeling was erased with devoted love and understanding and how the children united into one happy family. Her account reads like a novel, with scenes of hard times and triumphs described in vivid prose. The Family Nobody Wanted, which inspired two films, opened doors for other adoptive families and was a popular favorite among parents, young adults, and children for more than thirty years. Now this edition will introduce the classic to a new generation of readers. An epilogue by Helen Doss that updates the family's progress since 1954 will delight the book's loyal legion of fans around the world.

The Wilderness World of John Muir


John Muir - 1954
    In 1903, while on a three-day camping trip with President Theodore Roosevelt, he convinced the president of the importance of a national conservation program, and he is widely recognized for saving the Grand Canyon and Arizona's Petrified Forest. Muir's writing, based on journals he kept throughout his life, gives our generation a picture of an America still wild and unsettled only one hundred years ago. In The Wildernesss World of John Muir Edwin Way Teale has selected the best of Muir's writing from all of his major works—including My First Summer in the Sierra and Travels in Alaska—to provide a singular collection that provides to be "magnificent, thrilling, exciting, breathtaking, and awe-inspiring" (Kirkus Reviews).

The Bafut Beagles


Gerald Durrell - 1954
    Meet a frog with a coat of hair (which turns out not to be hair at all), full grown monkeys that fit inside a teacup, mice with wings, and many more of the species endemic to the Cameroons, not to mention the local ruler, the Fon of Bafut.

Three Singles to Adventure


Gerald Durrell - 1954
    three singles to adventure takes the reader to south America, where he meets the sakiwinki and the sloth clad in bright green fur, where he can hear the horrifying sound of piranha fish on the rampage, or learn how to lasso a galloping anteater.

The Nature of Prejudice


Gordon W. Allport - 1954
    First published in 1954, The Nature of Prejudice remains the standard work on discrimination. Now this classic study is offered in a special unabridged edition with a new introduction by Kenneth Clark of Columbia University and a new preface by Thomas Pettigrew of Harvard University.Allport's comprehensive and penetrating work examines all aspects of this age-old problem: its roots in individual and social psychology, its varieties of expression, its impact on the individuals and communities. He explores all kinds of prejudice-racial, religious, ethnic, economic and sexual-and offers suggestions for reducing the devastating effects of discrimination.The additional material by Clark and Pettigrew updates the social-psychological research in prejudice and attests to the enduring values of Allport's original theories and insights.

Riddles in Hinduism


B.R. Ambedkar - 1954
    There is no reason either to call them sacred or infallible … The time has come when the Hindu mind must be freed from the hold which the silly ideas propagated by the Brahmans have on them. Without this, the liberation of India has no future”—B.R. Ambedkar Hinduism claims one billion adherents worldwide. To all those who hold this religion dear, B.R. Ambedkar poses many riddles: Is it even a religion? Who is a Hindu? Like most of his writings, Riddles in Hinduism remained unpublished during his lifetime. When the state of Maharashtra finally printed it in 1987, the Shiv Sena sought a ban. While the liberals looked away, the Dalit movement circulated copies. At a time when the state and the Hindu right are painting Ambedkar as a ‘Hindu’ figure, this fierce critique—now with illuminating annotations—shows us how and why Ambedkar had no love for Hinduism. In his introduction, Kancha Ilaiah tells us why Hinduism is facing its biggest ever challenge from Dalitbahujans. Ambedkar was one, today there are a million Ambedkars.ISBN-10: 9788189059774ISBN-13: 978-8189059774

The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition


M.H. Abrams - 1954
    Abrams has given us a remarkable study, admirably conceived and executed, a book of quite exceptional and no doubt lasting significance for a number of fields - for the history of ideas and comparative literature as well as for English literary history, criticism and aesthetics.

The Tomb of Tutankhamen


Howard Carter - 1954
    Reprint.

K2, The Savage Mountain: The Classic True Story of Disaster and Survival on the World's Second Highest Mountain


Charles S. Houston - 1954
    The 1953 American expedition to the second highest peak in the world.

We Die Alone: A WWII Epic of Escape and Endurance


David Howarth - 1954
    But respected historian David A. Howarth confirmed the details of Jan Baalsrud's riveting tale. It begins in the spring of '43, with Norway occupied by the Nazis and the Allies desperate to open the northern sea lanes to Russia. Baalsrud and three compatriots plan to smuggle themselves into their homeland by boat, spend the summer recruiting and training resistance fighters, and launch a surprise attack on a German airbase. But he's betrayed shortly after landfall. A quick fight leaves Baalsrud alone and trapped on a freezing island above the Arctic Circle. He's poorly clothed (one foot entirely bare), has a head start of only a few hundred yards on his Nazi pursuers and leaves a trail of blood as he crosses the snow. How he avoids capture and ultimately escapes—revealing that much spoils nothing in this white-knuckle narrative—is astonishing stuff. Baalsrud's feats make the travails in Jon Krakauer's Mount Everest classic Into Thin Air look like child's play. This amazing book will disappoint no one. —John J. Miller (edited)

Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West


Wallace Stegner - 1954
    But it didn't stop him from exploring the American West. Here Wallace Stegner, a Pulitzer Prize-winner, gives us a thrilling account of Powell's struggle against western geography and Washington politics. We witness the successes and frustrations of Powell's distinguished career, and appreciate his unparalleled understanding of the West.<

Living the Good Life: How to Live Sanely and Simply in a Troubled World


Helen Nearing - 1954
    Moreover, it is the distillation of twenty--not two--years in the woods, and it offers wisdom and practical guidance to city dweller and prospective homesteader alike.This book is a harvest of congenial and specific advice on harmonious rural living, for its authors have proved to themselves--and now to the world--that with hard work and harder common sense, they could take a piece of eroded, stony land and make it bloom and support them. In the process they have achieved something fine for themselves and relevant for everybody. (Description from book jacket.)

The Universal Penman


George Bickham - 1954
    . . magnificent." — Graphis"A valuable addition for art directors." — Advertising AgeThis is the only complete edition available of one of the most famous and most useful books of commercial art ever printed. George Bickham, a noted engraver and calligrapher, first compiled this work back in the 1740’s, from the best specimens of 24 of the leading calligraphers of his day. Unfortunately, Bickham published his work in 52 separate parts, over a period of eight years. In Bickham’s own day it was difficult to get a complete set of the Universal Penman; today, apart from this edition, it is virtually impossible, for most surviving 18th-century copies lack certain rare plates. This Dover edition, however, contains every plate which Bickham engraved, and each is reproduced from an original so remarkably clear that these modern plates are actually better than most 18th-century originals.This book contains more than 210 full-page plates, each crammed full of beautiful and interesting material. To list only part of its contents:• Over 125 pictorial scenes, clear copperplates of drinking scenes, family scenes, commerce, rustic festivities, duels, more.• Over 200 script pictures, male and female heads, busts, cherubs, griffins, birds, fish, etc.• 19 complete alphabets: round hand, round text, Old English, florid, foliated, and others.• 275 lettered specimens, overlaid with fine flourishes, swirls, spirals, featherings, volutes, etc.• Over 100 panels, frames, cartouches, and other effectsOver 950 lettered specimens, with thousands of words that can be lifted right off for reproduction.Individual items in this book are permission-free, and may be used (up to ten items per use) without permission, payment, or credit line. Calligraphers find Bickham the best source for English round-handwriting; commercial artists, advertising directors, and designers all find Bickham first-rate as a source for immediately usable pictures and script that suggests antiquity, quality, and reliability. Craftspeople have found it rich in unusual ideas and motifs, while libraries and art historians find it a wonderful collection of 18th-century pictures illustrating art-life.

Ask That Mountain: The Story Of Parihaka


Dick Scott - 1954
    

Believe in Yourself


Joseph Murphy - 1954
    In Believe in Yourself Dr. Murphy shows you how the power of believing in yourself will help you achieve your dreams. He illustrates his points with wonderful stories about how inventors, writers, artists, and entrepreneurs have used this power to reach the highest of heights. By the end of the book you will have the tools for success. There are many men who quietly use the abstract term success, over and over many times a day until they reach a conviction that success is theirs. As a man repeats the word success to himself with faith and conviction, his subconscious mind will accept it as true of himself, and he will be under subjective compulsion to succeed. - Joseph Murphy

Son of Oscar Wilde


Vyvyan Holland - 1954
    Sharply observed, vivid, and dispassionate, it offers not only an unforgettable portrait of Wilde himself, his circle of friends, and his band of persecutors, but also a touching chronicle of Holland's own childhood, of the loneliness he experienced as the son of a remarkable, notorious father and of his emergence from the shadows of cruel injustice and dark scandal. "Fascinating for the light it sheds on Wilde's Oxford days and on his domestic life." - Atlantic Monthly "A strange chronicle . . . of considerable literary value." - New Yorker "Mr. Holland's vivid glimpses of the aftermath of that cause célèbre of the Nineties [do] a valuable service of his father's memory." - Saturday Review "An essential addition to Wildeana by a witness uniquely qualified to testify" - Library Journal "A biographical tour de force" - Observer

The Gentle House


Anna Perrott Rose - 1954
    Andris' orphanage was bombed by the Russians in 1944 and he spent the remainder of the war being shuttled around various displaced persons camps in Germany and Russia before being sent to America by a church group. Andris was awaiting adoption by a New Jersey couple in 1950 when he met his new teacher, the author. She eventually brings him home to live with her when Andris proves too much for the first foster parents.

Of Whales and Men


Robert Blackwood Robertson - 1954
    Description of an eight month's whaling expedition to Antarctica on board a Norweigan whaler, written by the attending head physician of the ship.

The Spider


John Crompton - 1954
    

What Catholics Believe


Josef Pieper - 1954
    The authors give, in brief and simple form, a summary of the fundamental teachings of the Catholic Church, and of the fruits of the faith contained in the teachings.

Faith, Hope and Charity: The Defence of Malta


Kenneth Poolman - 1954
    The story is also about the bravery and spirit of the Maltese people who gave their lives to keep the aircraft in the air and the men who toiled to keep the runway fit to fly on. The defense of Malta can justifiably be included among the epics of World War Two. The part played by ‘Faith’, ‘Hope’ and ‘Charity’ is symbolic of the courage and endurance displayed by the people of Malta during the struggle against vastly superior Axis Air Forces.

The Design and Tuning of Competition Engines


Philip Hubert Smith - 1954
    The first chapters explain the fundamentals that govern high-performance engines: thermodynamic laws, gasflow, mechanical efficiency, and engine materials and construction. Understanding these basic factors is crucial to making correct decisions when tuning or modifying your engine. Actual engine preparation techniques are described in the middle section, including cylinder head work and balancing and blueprinting. The final part of the book focuses on modifying specific engines: American V8s, Porsche 911, Volkswagen Air-cooled and Water-cooled, Cosworth BDA, Formula Ford 1600, Datsun 4- and 6-cylinder, and Mazda rotary engines. You'll learn proven techniques to increase performance and reliability, and, just as important, which modifications won't give you meaningful gains.

Bharathiya Samskruti (ಭಾರತೀಯ ಸಂಸ್ಕೃತಿ)


S. Srikanta Sastri - 1954
    ಭಾರತೀಯ ಸಂಸ್ಕೃತಿ - on cultural, traditional and historical aspects of India spanning over three millennia

Devon


W.G. Hoskins - 1954
    W.G. Hoskins, as one of England's greatest social and economic historians, is famous for pioneering the study of landscape history and for revolutionising the approaches to local history. This essential study contains 16 chapters on aspects of the county's history, an extended gazetteer, updated bibliography, and information on population. A 'must' for anyone interested in England's most popular county.

The real enjoyment of living


Hyman Judah Schachtel - 1954
    

Guinness World Records 2006


Guinness World Records - 1954
    From extreme bodies and medical marvels to food feats, natural wonders, and amazing technological advances, here is the latest, greatest, and most astounding of everything from around the world. Did you know... - An American woman holds the Guinness World Record for the most plastic surgery. Cindy Jackson has spent $99,600 on 47 cosmetic operations, including three face-lifts, two eye lifts, liposuction, lip and cheek implants, knee, waist, and abdomen surgery, and semipermanent makeup. - At 175 years of age, the world's oldest living resident is a giant land tortoise named Harriet, collected by Charles Darwin from the Galapagos Islands in 1835. This Guinness World Record holder currently resides at the Australia Zoo. ...and we're just warming up As always, this edition includes Guinness's spectacular photos, plus an all-new Sports Reference section. Packed with breathtaking spectacles and inspiring accomplishments, Guinness World Records 2006 is more awesome than ever

American Science and Invention: A Pictorial History


Mitchell Wilson - 1954
    

Baryshnikov: From Russia To The West


Gennady Smakov - 1954
    

The demon of progress in the arts


Wyndham Lewis - 1954
    A book of cultural criticism, one of the last works from the controversial writer and artist.

Drawing Self-Taught


Arthur Zaidenberg - 1954
    

Goya (1746-1828) (The Pocket library of great art)


Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes - 1954
    

Wild Adventure


Howard Hill - 1954
    From roping bear and cougar in Arizona to hunting wild boar with a longbow on Santa Catalina Island in California and alligator wrestling in the Everglades, Howard Hill was the prototypical "extreme" guy. Includes outstanding photography from Hill's adventures of such animals as grizzly bear, elk, mountain sheep and moose. First published by Stackpole Books in 1954. Foreword by Errol Flynn. New preface by Jerry Hill, the author's nephew.

An Innocent on Everest


Ralph Izzard - 1954
    He had no place in Hunt's party. He had no time to choose adequate equipment, to get acclimatized or plan his route. It is a credit to his own enterprising and courageous spirit that under such conditions he was able to glean so much information or reach so far. With a scratch collection of porters he made his way alone from Kathmandu to a height of 18,000 ft on the mountain - no small achievement.

Explaining the at


Selig Hecht - 1954
    

Problems of War and Strategy


Mao Zedong - 1954
    

Hurry, Skurry, and Flurry


Mary Buff - 1954
    A year in in the life of a forest, focusing on three squirrel siblings.