Showing results by narrator "Bob Neufeld" in All Categories

The Boy Generals: George Custer, Wesley Merritt, and the Cavalry of the Army of the Potomac is the first installment in a remarkable trilogy to examine the strategy, tactics, and relationships of the leading Union army’s mounted arm and their influence on the course of the Civil War in the Eastern Theater. George Armstrong Custer’s career has attracted its fair share of coverage, but most Custer-related studies focus on his decision-making and actions to the exclusion of other important factors, including his relationships with his fellow officers.

It is almost impossible to imagine today, but in the late 19th and early 20th century there were places where land was cheaper than food and more plentiful than water. During the homesteading period of the 1860s-1880s, the government typically offered land grants of 160 acres to any farmer who could get it cultivated within a certain amount of time. With that much land to make productive, and a limited number of years to get it cleared and planted, men would do whatever it took to get their crops in.

Enter the captivating world of Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Twice Told Tales." This collection of short stories takes listeners on a journey through the mysterious and dark corners of the human psyche. Hawthorne's masterful storytelling skillfully weaves together elements of the supernatural, romance, and allegory, creating a rich tapestry of narratives that explore the complexities of human nature. Each tale is beautifully crafted, immersing the listener in atmospheric settings and thought-provoking themes.

Although the Declaration of Independence is now considered one of the most important political documents in history, the men that drafted it did not initially favor such a move at the start of the American Revolution. Despite its assumption of governing duties, the Second Continental Congress never intended, at least initially, to become the governing body of a new nation. Instead, it merely hoped to transform the relationship between Britain and her colonies to allow for greater self-government on their side of the Atlantic.

On June 25, 1876, Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer led the 7th U.S. Cavalry into the valley of the Little Bighorn. By sunset, Custer and five of his companies lay dead - killed in battle against Sioux and Cheyenne warriors. Through the passage of time, Custer’s last fight has come to overshadow the rest of his military career, which had its brilliant beginning in the American Civil War. Plucked from obscurity by Maj. Gen. George McClellan, Custer served as a staff officer through the early stages of the war.

Although his work has somewhat fallen into obscurity, Alexander Ostrovsky (1823-1886) is considered to be one of the greatest of Russian dramatists. He was one of the pioneers of a realistic style, which later found exponents in celebrated European dramatists like Ibsen and Strindberg. Of Ostrovsky's 47 plays, one of the best known is The Storm, the portrait of an idealistic young woman trapped in a world of crushing and venal orthodoxy. The Storm formed the basis of Janacek's opera, Katya Kabanova.

"Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street" is a short story by the American writer Herman Melville, first serialized anonymously in two parts in the November and December 1853 issues of Putnam's Magazine, and reprinted with minor textual alterations in his The Piazza Tales in 1856. A Wall Street lawyer hires a new clerk who, after an initial bout of hard work, refuses to make copy and any other task required of him, with the words "I would prefer not to".

Charles Dickens' classic Yuletide tale is one of the most popular tales of personal redemption in world literature, and has been adapted many times for presentation on film and on stage.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain is an 1876 novel about a young boy growing up along the Mississippi River. It is set in the 1840 in the fictional town of St. Petersburg, inspired by Hannibal, Missouri, where Twain lived as a boy. In the novel, Tom Sawyer has several adventures, often with his friend Huckleberry Finn. Originally a commercial failure, the book ended up being the best selling of any of Twain's works during his lifetime. Although overshadowed by its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the book is considered a masterpiece of American literature.

Notes from Underground, also translated as Notes from the Underground or Letters from the Underworld, is an 1864 novella by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Notes is considered by many to be one of the first existentialist novels. It presents itself as an excerpt from the rambling memoirs of a bitter, isolated, unnamed narrator (generally referred to by critics as the Underground Man), who is a retired civil servant living in St. Petersburg.

Plague strikes the city of Sarum, and the dead rise from their graves. The liche, Dr. Cadman, has discovered a long-hidden artifact and perverted its power for his own selfish ends. But an ancient evil from beyond the stars is drawn by its use and turns hungry eyes upon the Earth. These are the times of Unweaving, the times Deacon Shader has been prepared for since the day he was born. A man of prayer, deeply troubled by a contradictory faith, he is also the deadliest warrior of his generation.

Before its 1902 publication, "Heart of Darkness" appeared as a three part series (1899) in "Blackwood's Magazine". It was classified by the Modern Library website editors as one of the "100 best novels" and part of the Western canon. The story centers on Charles Marlow, who narrates most of the book. He is an Englishman who takes a foreign assignment from a Belgian trading company as a river boat captain in Africa.

The Civil War. A man condemned to die. Does he escape and return to his wife and children? Ambrose Bierce's best-known story, the inspiration for a popular episode of The Twilight Zone, films and songs.

The text of the novel is the narration of Edward Prendick, a shipwrecked man rescued by a passing boat who is left on the island home of Doctor Moreau, who creates human-like hybrid beings from animals via vivisection. The novel deals with a number of philosophical themes, including pain and cruelty, moral responsibility, human identity, and human interference with nature. Wells described the novel as "an exercise in youthful blasphemy".

The Art of War is an ancient Chinese military treatise attributed to Sun Tzu, a high-ranking military general, strategist and tactician. The text is composed of 13 chapters, each devoted to one aspect of warfare. It is commonly considered to be the definitive work on military strategy and tactics of its time. It has been the most famous and influential of China's Seven Military Classics, and "for the last two thousand years it remained the most important military treatise in Asia, where even the common people knew it by name."

Heart of Darkness is a short novel by Polish novelist Joseph Conrad, written as a frame narrative, about Charles Marlow's life as an ivory transporter down the Congo River in Central Africa. This book was the basis for Francis Ford Coppola's classic Vietnam film Apocalypse Now.

The Art of War is an ancient Chinese military treatise attributed to Sun Tzu, a high-ranking military general, strategist, and tactician. The text is composed of 13 chapters, each devoted to one aspect of warfare. It is commonly considered to be the definitive work on military strategy and tactics of its time. It has been the most famous and influential of China's Seven Military Classics, and "for the last 2,000 years it remained the most important military treatise in Asia, where even the common people knew it by name."

Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a novella by the Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson first published in 1886. The work is also known as The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, or simply Jekyll & Hyde. It is about a London lawyer named Gabriel John Utterson who investigates strange occurrences between his old friend, Dr. Henry Jekyll, and the evil Edward Hyde.

Giovanni Tempesta always dreamed of becoming an opera tenor and one day singing from the stage of the La Scala Opera House in his hometown of Milan, Italy. But with no real training, his dream has little chance for fulfillment. One day, he meets and immediately falls in love with Isabella Monterone, a dark-haired beauty, whose father, a very rich and powerful Milanese Judge, refuses to allow his daughter to date a penniless musician.

The narrator is interested in mesmerism, a pseudoscience involving bringing a patient into a hypnagogic state by the influence of magnetism, a process that later developed into hypnotism. He points out that, as far as he knows, no one has ever been mesmerized at the point of death, and he is curious to see what effects mesmerism would have on a dying person. He considers experimenting on his friend Ernest Valdemar, an author whom he had previously mesmerized and who has recently been diagnosed with phthisis (tuberculosis).