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Ernest Hemingway and Robert Frost: Contrasts in Power

Ernest Hemingway

In 1923 Ernest Hemingway gave his sister a copy of his first published book. Removing the dark green paperbound volume from his pocket, he said, “Don’t show this to the family!”

Three Stories and Ten Poems had been printed in Paris.…

Charles Hartshorne

Charles Hartshorne was honored by The Library of Living Philosophers through having its twentieth volume be The Phdosophy of Charles Hartshorne. Prior works in this series have reckoned with the enduring contributions of Albert Einstein, John Dewey, George Santayana and Alfred North Whitehead.…

The Meditations of Arthur Foote II

 To read the Harvard Square Library biography of Arthur Foote II, click here.


OPEN OUR EARS

We would open our ears to all the varied music of the world: the melodies of human voices, the swelling harmonies of many instruments, and all the music not made by us: the songs of wind and bird, the thunder’s tympani the rhythms of running water.

Duke Ellington

In my youth during the jazz age, I had the opportunity to swing with such orchestras as Count Basie, Coleman Hawkins, Woody Herman, Artie Shaw, and Benny Goodman; but a band which I found surpassed all of these was that of Duke Ellington.…

Rachel Carson

“A Fable for Tomorrow” began Silent Spring, the book by Rachel Carson which marks the start of the ecology movement. In 1936 when she was an agnostic biologist with the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries, Rachel Carson wrote her first book, Under the Sea Wind.…

Ludwig Van Beethoven

Beethoven was still in his twenties when deafness began to overwhelm him, a composer-musician whose life’s fulfillment hinged upon his ability to communicate sound. Now, how could he communicate if he could not hear? By the age of 18, he had become the mainstay of his family because his father, like his grandmother, developed the sickness we call alcoholism and was unable any longer to meet the responsibilities of daily family life.…

Marian Anderson

Marian Anderson was born in South Philadelphia in 1902. Her father sold coal and ice and did other jobs. He was in charge of the ushers at the Union Baptist Church. When she was six, Marian was enrolled in the junior church choir.…

Carnegie, Louise (1857-1946)

The success of the public Carnegie Libraries played a great role in encouraging the development of libraries nationally, and many of the nation’s largest systems owe something to the Carnegie’s generosity.

Biographical Introduction

What a story! The wife of the richest man in the world, Andrew Carnegie, owner of the Carnegie Steel Corporation, enthusiastically advised her husband to stop making money and to start giving away his fortune by helping communities in America and beyond to build free public libraries.…

Abraham Lincoln and Horace Greeley

On August 19, 1862, Horace Greeley, the influential editor of the New York Tribune, published an open letter, titled “The Prayer of Twenty Millions,” calling on Lincoln to free the slaves as a way of weakening the Confederacy.  In response to Greeley’s editorial, Lincoln stated that his main purpose was to preserve the Union, and, to achieve that goal, he was prepared to free none, some, or all of the slaves, depending on the circumstances. …

Greeley, Horace (1811-1872)

Horace Greeley (February 3, 1811-November 29, 1872), Universalist journalist, reformer, and politician, is best known as the longtime, innovative publisher and editor of the New York Tribune. In 1872 he campaigned unsuccessfully for the United States presidency as the candidate of the Liberal Republicans and Democrats, running against incumbent Republican Ulysses S.…