Short Nonfiction Collection, Vol. 097

"One does not care to walk over a rug or carpet that displays a scene in perspective, neither does one wish to gaze into a landscape wrought upon the cover of a book." Harry Lyman Koopman's opinionated comments on the "clothing" of books are among the reader-selected topics in vol. 097. Selections with an artistic, intellectual, or humanistic focus include Diderot; Mark Sennett; Why I am a Pagan; President Coolidge's Address to the Boy Scouts; Memoirs of Jacob Ritter; Crito; Hospitality; Cubist Art; and Bedside Books. Historical and political readings include Italian Ultimatum to the Ottoman Government; The United States and Japan; President George Bush's Inaugural Address; and histories of the Astoria and Northern Pacific railroads. Scientific topics are addressed in Weather and Health of London; Coldward Course of Progress; The Aurora Borealis and Telegraph Cables; and two first-hand descriptions of the sun's Coronal Mass Ejection in 1859. - Summary by Sue Anderson