The Oregon Trail
Francis Parkman 1848 (Horses, rifles, and knives see a party of adventurers through the land of expansive plains, craggy mountains, buffalo, and the Sioux.) “Shaw! Buddy!” Imagine a young, spontaneous Yankee calling out to his friend, both of them just out of college. He proposes that they leave the effeminate comforts of the East, and […]
A Sand County Almanac
Aldo Leopold 1948 (An ecologist contemplates and celebrates the land, and recommends an expansion of our moral world.) In today’s courses on ecology, forestry, conservation, environmental philosophy or land use, three personalities are routinely introduced as the fathers of modern concern for nature, the three who first and most strongly urged us to enlarge our […]
The Travels
(Il Milione) Marco Polo (with Rustichello of Pisa) 1299 (An Italian explorer treks fearlessly into the unknown East, and discovers astonishing cultures and kingdoms no European had ever seen). We are fortunate that Marco Polo lived long enough and expended the energy to record the greatest travels ever performed by any man to his time […]
Discourse on Method
(Discours de la méthode) René Descartes 1637 (A scientist-philosopher wishes that all the deep questions of life could be as certain as his mathematical results—so he decides to start from scratch and make them that way.) The influence this little book has had over the past few centuries is (to make a ridiculous understatement) vastly […]
Apology of Socrates
October 3, 2014 / Leave a comment
(Απολογια Σωκρατους) Plato 4th century BC (An innocent man delivers an inspiring speech to the court before he is executed.) Socrates is a bit of a mystery, if you insist on being a real evidentiary hardliner. He wrote nothing himself, so we have to rely on others’ characterizations of him. Xenophon paints him as the […]
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