Short Nonfiction Collection, Vol. 072

Twenty short nonfiction works, individually chosen by the readers. "The ground rose and fell in successive furrows, like the ruffled waters of a lake, and I became bewildered in my ideas..." John James Audubon's vivid recollection of the 1812 New Madrid earthquake is one of several Vol. 072 selections with a scientific focus. Others include Luminous Plants; The Sunbeam and the Spectrascope; and biographies of two shipbuilders: Robert Fulton and Thomas Andrews. The emotive and rational sides of human nature are evinced in essays (The Game of Scandal; Bashful; Child Psychology and Nonsense); treatises (Theory and Practice in Government Reform; Plagiarizing Aristotle); and the records of two very different murder trials: John Kimber (1792); and James Sullivan (1851). Travel to foreign lands; their history and arts are well represented: Rambles About Rome (1907); The Mosaics of Ravenna, Italy; Travellers Before the Christian Era; Northern Europe to the Beginning of the Fourteenth Century. Literary and artistic concerns round out Vol. 072, with newspaper accounts of Oscar Wilde's visits to the U.S.; William Faulkner reminiscing about his youthful discovery of literature; and artist and teacher Arthur Guptill explaining how to render pencil sketches from photographs. Summary by Sue Anderson