With an Introduction and Notes by Bernard Waites, The Open University In 1795 Mungo Park, a twenty-four year old Scottish surgeon, set out from the Gambia to trace the course of the Niger, a river of which Europeans had no first-hand knowledge. Travels in the interior districts of Africa… is his Journal of that extraordinary journey. He travelled on the sufferance of African rulers and soon came to depend for his survival on the charity of African...

Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe is a powerful coming-of-age novel that explores the life, struggles, and inner world of Eugene Gant, a young man growing up in the fictional Southern town of Altamont, which closely resembles Wolfe's hometown of Asheville, North Carolina. Through Eugene's journey, Wolfe creates a vibrant portrait of family tensions, personal ambitions, and the unrelenting search for identity and meaning. The novel immerses readers...

Augustine's Confessions might be one of the most profound Christian testimonies ever recorded. Not necessarily because Augustine led an unusual life or faced intriguing circumstances which had to be overcome; because, in reality, the actual events of his life were relatively less than extraordinary. Augustine's Confessions serve as such a spectacular testimony because, besides the fact that it was one of the first of its kind in the literary world,...

When I received the script of The Voyage of the Discovery I was amazed. I had only to read a few pages to realise that it was literature, unique of its kind . . . Scott's mind was like wax to receive an impression and like marble to retain it'. So wrote Leonard Huxley, and he was not alone in his opinion. When this account of Scott's first Antarctic expedition appeared in 1905 the reviewers recognised it as a masterpiece and the first printing sold...

In this diary Pepys observed and recorded the details of a ten-year period of English history which included not only the Restoration, but the Great Plague of 1665 and the Fire of London of the following year.

Veinte años tardará Ulises, el rey de Ítaca, en volver a su patria. Luego de luchar en la guerra de Troya por diez años, siendo uno de los héroes, Ulises emprende el regreso a su tierra natal. Pero una ofensa al dios Poseidón lo alejará de su camino por otros diez años, siendo condenado a navegar sin rumbo y a vivir las más extrañas aventuras y vicisitudes en el camino. Así, en su retorno a Ítaca, Ulises desafiará monstruos y tempestades,...

Marx's critique of the capitalist system is rife with big  themes: his theory of 'surplus value', his discussion of the  exploitation of the working class, and his forecast of class conflict on  a grand scale. This edition contains Volume One of this classic work.

In a world where capitalism is no longer held in check by fear of a communist alternative, The Communist Manifesto (with Socialism Utopian and Scientific, Engels's brief and clear exposition of Marxist thought) is essential reading. The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 is Engels's first, and probably best-known, book.

The storyteller stands beside the fire, swaying, dancing, miming, singing, reciting. With one hand he shakes a gourd rattle, with the other he swings a conga -- a flyswatter made with a buffalo tail on a wooden handle. Anklet bells tinkle as he moves. Three young men beat a wooden drum with sticks. Listening to him is a crowd of men, women, and children. They sing along at a song's refrain, they repeat whole lines of the story when he pauses to see...

Not so long ago, in the tiny, isolated villages of Finland, where prolonged summer days gave way to endless winter nights, people would pass the time by singing the many adventures of their favorite heroes: the mighty, magical men and women of ancient days. They sang of old Vainamoinen, greatest of sages and magicians, who helped create the world but never could find a woman to wed him. They sang of his friend and ally Ilmarinen, first among craftsmen,...