Mark Twain Writes a Rapturous Letter to Walt Whitman on the Poet’s 70th Birthday (1889)

in Letters, Literature | May 8th, 2014

May 31, 1889, Walt Whitman’s seventieth birthday, occasioned a celebration of the poet in his hometown of Camden, New Jersey, with a several course dinner called “The Feast of Reason” followed by a program called “The Flow of Soul,” a succession of testimonial speeches and readings by prominent politicians and a few minor literary figures. Whitman himself was in ill health, but he managed to attend during dessert, deliver a brief response, then stay for over two hours afterward (see the event’s original program, with menu, here). While the event itself, writes Ed Folsom in the Walt Whitman Quarterly Review, was intended as a “local celebration of Camden’s most famous personality,” the occasion prompted admirers worldwide to send birthday wishes by wire and letter. Some of the famous literary figures who wrote included John Addington Symonds, William Dean Howells, John Greenleaf Whittier, and Mark Twain.

Twain’s letter (first page above) is not only a deeply heartfelt appreciation of the greatest living American poet, it is also, as Letters of Note puts it, “a love letter to human endeavor.” Twain enumerates with awe the astounding technological advances Whitman has witnessed in his lifetime, from steam power to photography to electric light. The letter is characteristic of the optimism of the age—so perfectly captured a little over a decade later in Henry Adams’ memoir chapter “The Dynamo and the Virgin.” Twain, hardly a religious man, evinces an almost rapturous faith in progress, concluding with a Biblical allusion and a somewhat obscure reference to an apocalyptic figure—“him for whom the earth was made”—who would appear in thirty years time. One can’t help but think, in hindsight, of Yeats’ 1919 occult meditation on the loss of that Victorian certainty in “The Second Coming.” As Marc L. Roark observes at The Literary Table, “Twain was correct — thirty years from the letter would see technology like the world never knew. Unfortunately, that technology was that of war.”

Hartford, May 24/89

To Walt Whitman:

You have lived just the seventy years which are greatest in the world’s history & richest in benefit & advancement to its peoples. These seventy years have done much more to widen the interval between man & the other animals than was accomplished by any five centuries which preceded them.

What great births you have witnessed! The steam press, the steamship, the steel ship, the railroad, the perfected cotton-gin, the telegraph, the phonograph, the photograph, photo-gravure, the electrotype, the gaslight, the electric light, the sewing machine, & the amazing, infinitely varied & innumerable products of coal tar, those latest & strangest marvels of a marvelous age. And you have seen even greater births than these; for you have seen the application of anesthesia to surgery-practice, whereby the ancient dominion of pain, which began with the first created life, came to an end in this earth forever; you have seen the slave set free, you have seen the monarchy banished from France, & reduced in England to a machine which makes an imposing show of diligence & attention to business, but isn’t connected with the works. Yes, you have indeed seen much — but tarry yet a while, for the greatest is yet to come. Wait thirty years, & then look out over the earth! You shall see marvels upon marvels added to these whose nativity you have witnessed; & conspicuous above them you shall see their formidable Result — Man at almost his full stature at last! — & still growing, visibly growing while you look. In that day, who that hath a throne, or a gilded privilege not attainable by his neighbor, let him procure his slippers & get ready to dance, for there is going to be music. Abide, & see these things! Thirty of us who honor & love you, offer the opportunity. We have among us 600 years, good & sound, left in the bank of life. Take 30 of them — the richest birth-day gift ever offered to poet in this world — & sit down & wait. Wait till you see that great figure appear, & catch the far glint of the sun upon his banner; then you may depart satisfied, as knowing you have seen him for whom the earth was made, & that he will proclaim that human wheat is worth more than human tares, & proceed to organize human values on that basis.

Mark Twain

See Letters of Note for the remaining images of Twain’s letter. You can peruse all of the speeches, letters, and telegrams addressed to Whitman on his 70th birthday in the collection Camden’s Compliment to Walt Whitman, published that same year.

For many more fascinating historical letters, be sure to check out Letters of Note’s new book, Letters of Note: Correspondence Deserving of a Wider Audience.

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Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness.

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Hear the Voice of Arthur Conan Doyle After His Death

in History, Literature, Religion | May 7th, 2014

We’ve previously documented the strange case of Arthur Conan Doyle’s fervent Spiritualism, which Mark Strauss of io9 aptly describes as “hard to reconcile [with] the man who created the literary embodiment of empirical thinking,” Sherlock Holmes. Conan Doyle was so eager to believe in the existence of fairies and what he called “psychic matters” that he was frequently taken in by hoaxes. But the physician and novelist’s seemingly odd views obtained widely among his contemporaries who sought confirmation of the afterlife and communion with their dead relatives, millions of whom were lost in the Civil War, then World War I.

Spiritualism provided a comfort to the bereaved, as well as ample opportunity for grifters and charlatans. And yet, Strauss points out, the rise of Spiritualism in the 19th century may also have been due to the rising influence of science in popular culture, as more and more people sought experimental evidence for their supernatural beliefs. Conan Doyle wrote twenty books on the subject, including the two-volume 1924 History of Spiritualism. In a speech he gave in May of 1930, just before his death, he explained the appeal. Hear the audio above and read a transcription below:

People ask, what do you get from spiritualism? The first thing you get is that it absolutely removes all fear of death. Secondly, it bridges death for those dear ones whom we may lose. We need have no fear that we are calling them back, for all that we do is to make such conditions as experience has taught us, will enable them to come if they wish. And the initiative lies always with them.

Two months later at a séance attended by thousands at the Royal Albert Hall, a medium claimed to have communicated with the Sherlock Holmes author. And four years after that, another medium, Noah Zerdin, held a séance attended by hundreds, and Conan Doyle is said to have been one of 44 who spoke from the beyond. This time, the event was recorded, on 26 acetate disks, which were only discovered 67 years later in 2001 by Zerdin’s son, who donated them to the British Library. The 1934 recordings featured in a 2002 BBC radio documentary called What Grandad Did in the Dark.

Just above, you can hear the supposed voice of Arthur Conan Doyle speaking from the spirit world. The audio is seriously spooky, but I’m not inclined to believe that it’s anything more than a hoax, although the technology of the time would make manipulation of the direct recordings difficult. So-called “spirit voices” in recordings such as this are known as EVP (“electronic voice phenomenon”), and there are many such examples of the genre at the British Library, including a batch of 60 tapes made by a Dr. Konstantin Raudive, “who believed that the dead could communicate with the living through the medium of radio waves.”

A post on the British Library site comments that “the recorded evidence is not especially convincing, being short comments or fragments that without the accompanying spoken ‘translation’ would probably not strike the listener as having any meaningful content.” The Conan Doyle audio seems a little more coherent, though it’s difficult to make out exactly what the voice says. Compare the two samples and draw your own conclusions. Or better yet, consider what Sherlock Holmes would make of this alleged “evidence.”

You can find Sherlock Holmes texts in our collections: 600 Free eBooks for iPad, Kindle & Other Devices and 550 Free Audio Books: Download Great Books for Free.

via io9

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Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness.

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What Was It Like to Have Philip Roth as an English Prof?

in Literature | May 5th, 2014

Image by Thierry Ehrmann, via Flickr Commons

Writing in The New York Times this weekend, author Lisa Scottoline remembers her days at the University of Pennsylvania, back during the 1970s, when she took seminars with then-visiting professor, Philip Roth. One course the famous novelist taught was called ““The Literature of Desire,” which prompted students to think, “Who wouldn’t want to read dirty books with Philip Roth?” It turns out the class didn’t get very sexy. But students did learn quite a bit. Scottoline writes:

Looking back, I’ve come to understand that he was the best professor I ever had, not only because of his genius, but also because of his distance. We were a group of girls eager to please, to guess at what he wanted us to say, and to say that for him. We all wanted to hear about him, or have him tell us how to write, but that was something he steadfastly denied us. By withholding his own personality, thoughts and opinions, he forced us back on our own personalities, thoughts and opinions. He made us discover what we wanted to write about, and to write about it the way we wanted to.

You can read the rest of her account here.

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Vintage Footage of Leo Tolstoy: Video Captures the Great Novelist During His Final Days

in Film, History, Literature | May 5th, 2014

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“My life came to a standstill,” wrote Leo Tolstoy in his 1882 conversion memoir A Confession, “I could not breathe, eat, drink, and sleep, and I could not help doing these things.” So Tolstoy’s described his “arrest of life,” a period of severe depression that led to a very deep, personal brand of faith in his late middle age. The towering Russian novelist renounced worldly desires and came to identify with the poor, the former serfs of his aristocratic class. Tolstoy’s radical religious anarchism in his final years spread his fame far among the peasantry just as his literary achievements had brought him worldwide renown among the reading public. So famous was Tolstoy, William Nickell tells us, that Russian critic Vasily Rozanov wrote that “to be a Russian and not have [seen] Tolstoy was like being Swiss and not having seen the Alps.”

Nickell describes the occasions that Tolstoy appeared on film, the new medium that allowed the author’s millions of adoring fans to get a glimpse of him. Just as his life was punctuated by a radical departure from his earlier attitudes, his medium was in for a shock as film forever changed the way stories were told.

In those early days, however, it was very often simply a means of recording history, and we should be glad of that. It means we too can see Tolstoy, at the top on his 80th birthday. We see him vigorously sawing logs and piously giving alms to the poor. Also included in the initial footage are Tolstoy’s wife Sofya, his daughter Aleksandra, and aide and editor Vladimir Chertkov. Then, at 1:04, the scene shifts to Tolstoy’s deathbed and scenes of his funeral. The remaining 11 minutes give us some unidentified footage of the author. (If you’re able to read the title cards in Russian, please let us know!).

Just above, see a more complete film of Tolstoy’s death and funeral procession. The author died at age 82 after he abruptly decided to leave his wife, taking only a few possessions and his doctor. Read the dramatic story of Tolstoy’s last ten days in this translated excerpt from Pavel Basinsky’s award winning Leo Tolstoy: Escape from Paradise.

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Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness.

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Albert Camus Wins the Nobel Prize & Sends a Letter of Gratitude to His Elementary School Teacher (1957)

in Letters, Literature | May 1st, 2014

Image by United Press International, via Wikimedia Commons

What would you do if you won a Nobel Prize? Who would you thank? We’ve all wondered about it, perhaps not about the Nobel specifically, but about some potentially legacy-confirming prize or other — maybe an Oscar, maybe a MacArthur Fellowship. When Albert Camus, the short-lived French novelist-philosopher who wrote such enduring works as The Stranger and The Myth of Sisyphus, won the Nobel for Literature in 1957 “for his important literary production, which with clear-sighted earnestness illuminates the problems of the human conscience in our times,” he thanked an elementary-school teacher. “One could argue that, in the history of the field, few teacher-pupil relationships have had more dramatic impact than that of Louis Germain on his young pupil Albert Camus,” says a Chicago Tribune article published during an upswing in American interest in Camus’ work. That happened soon after the publication of his unfinished autobiographical novel The First Man, a “classic story of a poor boy who made good” whose appendix includes the author’s real-life correspondence with his former teacher.

One of these letters Camus wrote to Germain not long after winning the Nobel. (You can hear his actual acceptance speech here.) He no doubt saw the older man’s formative influence as essential to the work that brought that prestigious prize his way, since, as Letters of Note puts it, “he was just 11-months-old when his father was killed in action during The Battle of the Marne; his mother, partially deaf and illiterate, then raised her boys in extreme poverty with the help of his heavy-handed grandmother. It was in school that Camus shone, due in no small part to the encouragement offered by his beloved teacher.” Though never thrilled about public honors of this type, Camus nonetheless knew a chance to express long-felt gratitude when he saw it, and to Germain he wrote these sentences as brief and as powerful as many in his books:

19 November 1957

Dear Monsieur Germain,

I let the commotion around me these days subside a bit before speaking to you from the bottom of my heart. I have just been given far too great an honour, one I neither sought nor solicited.

But when I heard the news, my first thought, after my mother, was of you. Without you, without the affectionate hand you extended to the small poor child that I was, without your teaching and example, none of all this would have happened.

I don’t make too much of this sort of honour. But at least it gives me the opportunity to tell you what you have been and still are for me, and to assure you that your efforts, your work, and the generous heart you put into it still live in one of your little schoolboys who, despite the years, has never stopped being your grateful pupil. I embrace you with all my heart.

Albert Camus

For more such memorable correspondence, do consider having a look at Letters of Note’s newly published book, Letters of Note: An Eclectic Collection of Correspondence Deserving of a Wider Audience.

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Colin Marshall hosts and produces Notebook on Cities and Culture and writes essays on cities, language, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Angeles, A Los Angeles Primer. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Facebook.

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Watch Hand-Drawn Animations of 7 Stories & Essays by C.S. Lewis

in Animation, Literature, Philosophy, Religion | April 30th, 2014

I can vividly recall the first time I read C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters. I was fourteen, and I was prepared to be terrified by the book, knowing of its demonic subject matter and believing at the time in invisible malevolence. The novel is written as a series of letters between Screwtape and his nephew Wormwood, two devils tasked with corrupting their human charges, or “patients,” through all sorts of subtle and insidious tricks. The book has a reputation as a literary aid to Christian living—like Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress—but it’s so much more than that. Instead of fire and brimstone, I found ribald wit, sharp satire, a cutting psychological dissection of the modern Western mind, with its evasions, pretensions, and cagey delusions. Stripped of its theology, it might have been written by Orwell or Sartre, though Lewis clearly owes a debt to Kierkegaard, as well as the long tradition of medieval morality plays, with their cavorting devils and didactic human types. Yes, the book is baldly moralistic, but it’s also a brilliant examination of all the twisted ways we fool ourselves and dissemble, or if you like, get led astray by evil forces.

If you haven’t read the book, you can see a concise animation of a critical scene above, one of seven made by “C.S. Lewis Doodle” that illustrate the key points of some of Lewis’s books and essays. Lewis believed in evil forces, but his method of presenting them is primarily literary, and therefore ambiguous and open to many different readings (somewhat like the devil Woland in Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita). The author imagined hell as “something like the bureaucracy of a police state or a thoroughly nasty business office,” a description as chilling as it is inherently comic. As you can see above in the animated scene from Screwtape by C.S. Lewis Doodle, the devils—though drawn in this case as old-fashioned winged fiends—behave like petty functionaries as they lead Wormwood’s solidly middle-class “patient” into the sinister clutches of materialist doctrine by appealing to his intellectual vanity. As much as it’s a condemnation of said doctrine, the scene also works as a critique of a popular discourse that thrives on fashionable jargon and the desire to be seen as relevant and well-read, no matter the truth or coherence of one’s beliefs.

Screwtape was by no means my first introduction to Lewis’s works. Like many, many people, I cut my literary teeth on The Chronicles of Narnia (available on audio here) and his brilliant sci-fi Space Trilogy. But it was the first book of his I’d read that was clearly apologetic in its intent, rather than allegorical. I’m sure I’m not unique among Lewis’s readers in graduating from Screwtape to his more philosophical books and many essays. One such piece, “We Have No (Unlimited) Right to Happiness,” takes on the modern conception of rights as natural guarantees, rather than societal conventions. As he critiques this relatively recent notion, Lewis develops a theory of sexual morality in which “when two people achieve lasting happiness, this is not solely because they are great lovers but because they are also—I must put it crudely—good people; controlled, loyal, fair-minded, mutually adaptable people.” The C.S. Lewis Doodle above illustrates the many examples of fickleness and inconstancy that Lewis presents in his essay as foils for the virtues he espouses.

The Lewis Doodle seen here illustrates his 1948 essay “On Living in an Atomic Age,” in which Lewis chides readers for the panic and paranoia over the impending threat of nuclear war in the wake of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Such an occurrence, he writes, would only result in the already inevitable—death—just as the plagues of the sixteenth century or Viking raids:

This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things — praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts — not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.

It seems a very mature, and noble, perspective, but if you think that Lewis glibly glosses over the substantively different effects of a nuclear age from any other—fallout, radiation poisoning, the end of civilization itself—you are mistaken. His answer, however, you may find as I do deeply fatalistic. Lewis questions the value of civilization altogether as a hopeless endeavor bound to end in any case in “nothing.” “Nature is a sinking ship,” he writes, and dooms us all to annihilation whether we hasten the end with technology or manage to avoid that fate. Here is Lewis the apologist, presenting us with the starkest of options—either all of our endeavors are utterly meaningless and without purpose or value, since we cannot make them last forever, or all meaning and value reside in the theistic vision of existence. I’ve not myself seen things Lewis’s way on this point, but the C.S. Lewis Doodler does, and urges his viewers who agree to “send to your enquiring atheistic mates” his lovely little adaptations. Or you can simply enjoy these as many non-religious readers of Lewis enjoy his work—take what seems beautiful, humane, true, and skillfully, lucidly written (or drawn), and leave the rest for your enquiring Christian mates.

You can watch all seven animations of C.S. Lewis’s writings here.

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Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness.

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J.R.R. Tolkien Snubs a German Publisher Asking for Proof of His “Aryan Descent” (1938)

in History, Literature | April 28th, 2014

As you’d expect from a man who had to create, in painstaking detail, all the races that populate Middle-Earth, J.R.R. Tolkien had little time for simple racism. He had especially little time for the highest-profile simple racism of his day, the wave of anti-Jewish sentiment on which Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party rode straight into the Second World War. His first novel The Hobbit, predecessor to the Lord of the Rings trilogy, first appeared in 1937, a time when the situation in Europe had turned ominous indeed, and would get far uglier still. It didn’t take long after the book’s initial success for Berlin publisher Rütten & Loening to express their interest in putting out a German edition, but first — in observance, no doubt, of the Third Reich’s dictates — they asked for proof of Tolkien’s “Aryan descent.” The author drafted two replies, the less civil of which reads as follows:

25 July 1938
20 Northmoor Road, Oxford

Dear Sirs,

Thank you for your letter. I regret that I am not clear as to what you intend by arisch. I am not of Aryan extraction: that is Indo-Iranian; as far as I am aware none of my ancestors spoke Hindustani, Persian, Gypsy, or any related dialects. But if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people. My great-great-grandfather came to England in the eighteenth century from Germany: the main part of my descent is therefore purely English, and I am an English subject — which should be sufficient. I have been accustomed, nonetheless, to regard my German name with pride, and continued to do so throughout the period of the late regrettable war, in which I served in the English army. I cannot, however, forbear to comment that if impertinent and irrelevant inquiries of this sort are to become the rule in matters of literature, then the time is not far distant when a German name will no longer be a source of pride.

Your enquiry is doubtless made in order to comply with the laws of your own country, but that this should be held to apply to the subjects of another state would be improper, even if it had (as it has not) any bearing whatsoever on the merits of my work or its sustainability for publication, of which you appear to have satisfied yourselves without reference to my Abstammung.

I trust you will find this reply satisfactory, and

remain yours faithfully,

J. R. R. Tolkien

“I have in this war a burning private grudge against that ruddy little ignoramus Adolf Hitler,” Tolkien wrote to his son Michael three years later, by which time the war had reached a new height. “Ruining, perverting, misapplying, and making for ever accursed, that noble northern spirit, a supreme contribution to Europe, which I have ever loved, and tried to present in its true light.”

He had already faced German forces in combat during his service in World War I, and had almost became one of World War II’s codebreakers after the British Foreign Office’s cryptographic department brought the possibility to him in early 1939. He did not, in the event, participate directly in the conflict, but he did leave behind an uncommonly eloquent paper trail documenting his stance of unambiguous antipathy for the Nazis and their ideology.

For more such fascinating perspectives vouchsafed to history through the mail, do have a look at Letters of Note: An Eclectic Collection of Correspondence Deserving of a Wider Audience, the brand new book from the site of the same name. Tolkien’s letter above comes from it, as do many of the illuminating missives we’ve featured here before — and, without a doubt, those we’ll continue to feature in the future.

Want to download a Tolkien audio book for free? Start a 30-day free trial with Audible.com and you can download one of his major works in unabridged format. You can keep the book regardless of whether you continue with their great program or not. There are no strings attached.

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Discover J.R.R. Tolkien’s Personal Book Cover Designs for The Lord of the Rings Trilogy

Colin Marshall hosts and produces Notebook on Cities and Culture and writes essays on cities, language, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Angeles, A Los Angeles Primer. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Facebook.

by Colin Marshall | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 18 ) |

The Importance of Kindness: An Animation of George Saunders’ Touching Graduation Speech

in Graduation Speech, Life, Literature | April 25th, 2014

Ever since he was first published in The New Yorker back in 1992, George Saunders has been crafting a string of brilliant short stories that have reinvented the form. His stories are dark, funny, and satirical that then turn on a dime and become surprisingly moving. And the maddening thing about him is that he makes such tonal dexterity look easy. Over the course of his career, he has won piles of awards including a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship in 2006. In 2013, his collection of short stories The Tenth of December was selected by the New York Times as one of the best books of the year. You can read 10 stories by Saunders free online here.

Last year, Saunders delivered the convocation speech for Syracuse University where he teaches writing. Most such speeches are dull and forgettable or, as was the case when Ross Perot spoke at my graduation, incoherent and churlish. Saunders’s speech, however, was something different — a quiet, self-effacing plea for empathy. When it was reprinted by the New York Times last July, the speech seemingly popped up on every third person’s Facebook feed.

Brooklyn-based group Serious Lunch has created an animated version of Saunders’ speech, voiced by the author himself. You can watch it above and read along below. You’ll probably want to call your mom or help an old lady across the street afterward.

I’d say, as a goal in life, you could do worse than try to be kinder.

In seventh grade, this new kid joined our class. In the interest of confidentiality, her name will be “ELLEN.” ELLEN was small, shy. She wore these blue cat’s‑eye glasses that, at the time, only old ladies wore. When nervous, which was pretty much always, she had a habit of taking a strand of hair into her mouth and chewing on it.

So she came to our school and our neighborhood, and was mostly ignored, occasionally teased (“Your hair taste good?” – that sort of thing). I could see this hurt her. I still remember the way she’d look after such an insult: eyes cast down, a little gut-kicked, as if, having just been reminded of her place in things, she was trying, as much as possible, to disappear. After awhile she’d drift away, hair-strand still in her mouth.

Sometimes I’d see her hanging around alone in her front yard, as if afraid to leave it.
And then – they moved. That was it. One day she was there, next day she wasn’t.

End of story.

Now, why do I regret that? Why, forty-two years later, am I still thinking about it? Relative to most of the other kids, I was actually pretty nice to her. I never said an unkind word to her. In fact, I sometimes even (mildly) defended her. But still, it bothers me.

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.

Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded…sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.

Or, to look at it from the other end of the telescope: Who, in your life, do you remember most fondly, with the most undeniable feelings of warmth?
Those who were kindest to you, I bet.

But kindness, it turns out, is hard — it starts out all rainbows and puppy dogs, and expands to include … well, everything.

You can read Saunders’s entire speech here.

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Jonathan Crow is a Los Angeles-based writer and filmmaker whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hollywood Reporter, and other publications. You can follow him at @jonccrow.

by Jonathan Crow | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 4 ) |

Mark Twain Writes a Rapturous Letter to Walt Whitman on the Poet’s 70th Birthday (1889)

Hear the Voice of Arthur Conan Doyle After His Death

What Was It Like to Have Philip Roth as an English Prof?

Vintage Footage of Leo Tolstoy: Video Captures the Great Novelist During His Final Days

Albert Camus Wins the Nobel Prize & Sends a Letter of Gratitude to His Elementary School Teacher (1957)

Watch Hand-Drawn Animations of 7 Stories & Essays by C.S. Lewis

J.R.R. Tolkien Snubs a German Publisher Asking for Proof of His “Aryan Descent” (1938)

The Importance of Kindness: An Animation of George Saunders’ Touching Graduation Speech

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