This book takes readers on a leisurely journey through a bygone era with fascinating accounts of canals, corduroy roads, and turnpikes, waterwheels and icehouses, colorful road signs and their painters, circus folk, and more. Brimming with anecdotes about people and the times, this delightful narrative remains a milestone of Americana.

The last and greatest of Dostoevsky's novels, The Brothers Karamazov is a towering masterpiece of literature, philosophy, psychology, and religion. It tells the story of intellectual Ivan, sensual Dmitri, and idealistic Alyosha Karamazov, who collide in the wake of their despicable father's brutal murder. Into the framework of the story Dostoevsky poured all of his deepest concerns -- the origin of evil, the nature of freedom, the craving for meaning...

Bryson (A Short History of Nearly Everything) takes readers on a tour of his house, a rural English parsonage, showing how each room has figured in the evolution of private life.

"Here is a wonderful, rambunctious gallery of folk: the early "ornery" ones like Hetty Green, the "outsider" who came to Vermont contrary, and stayed to become more so; Russel Colvin, the alleged corpse, who turned out to be not so dead; Eleazer Wheelock's son, John, who became the second president of Dartmouth College -- right through Calvin Coolidge. Her are Vermont's weird religions, fights, sports and finaglings; her artists (including the adopted...

Interviews and essays describe the way of life and crafts of pioneer America still surviving in the Appalachian region.