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Desiderus Erasmus was one of the greatest scholars of all time. He lived at the time of the Renaissance, in the late 15th to early 16th centuries, a period of profound change, and a time when every European nation managed to go to war with another European nation. "The Complaint of Peace" grew from his reaction to his warlike times. His desire for peace permeates his work. Now, 500 years later, Peace's words still retain their relevance.

Sir Richard Burton was an explorer, linguist, scholar, soldier, anthropologist, and writer. Burton used his own resources to fund expeditions to map new trade routes, identify and catalogue natural resources, and analyze political, religious, and economic systems in foreign countries. He is probably best known for his expeditions with John Hanning Speke to find the source of the Nile, which he accomplished in 1858. He is also known for the first English translations of the "Kama Sutra" and the "Arabian Nights". This biography was written by Burton's niece in an effort to "tell the truth concerning one who can no longer defend himself" and to "supply.the story of a great traveler's life in popular form." It is, simply, quite a journey to follow of one of the 19th century's most intriguing characters.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose original profession and calling was as a Unitarian minister, left the ministry to pursue a career in writing and public speaking. Emerson went on to become one of America's best-known and best-loved 19th century figures. Along with Thoreau, Hawthorne, Fuller, the Peabody sisters, the Alcott family, Jonas, Very, the Ripleys, and the Channings, Emerson helped shape a circle of poets, reformers, artists, and thinkers who helped to define a new identity for American art. In this biography, written by American physician, poet, and humorist Oliver Wendell Holmes, Emerson's life is traced from his family genealogy through his childhood, his years in school, his ordination and early writings, to his years as a preeminent thinker, lecturer, poet, and writer. The book, originally published in 1885, even offers a look at the "future of his reputation" from the late 19th century point of view.

This is a collection of 22 charming Japanese fairy tales, originally published in 1905, selected and translated by Yei Theodora Ozaki. Included are legends and fairy tales about peasants and kings, god and bad forces, princesses, animals, the sea, and the sky.

"George Washington" is an intriguing biography of America's first president as told by the man who would later become its twenty-eighth, Woodrow Wilson. Wilson takes us on a journey from a look at Washington's times to his Virginia breeding to his life in colonial America. Wilson looks at how these factors shaped the man who would lead the nation in its fight for independence and into its first years as a new nation. This is an insightful look into our nation's early history by a man who would play a key part in it more than one hundred years later.

Vait-hua was all savage; whatever bewilderments the missionaries had brought had faded when dwindling population left the isle to its own people. In the minds of my happy companions at the vai puna, modesty had no more to do with clothing than, among us, it had to do with food....Savage peoples can never understand our philosophy, our complex springs of action. They may ape our manners, wear our ornaments, and seek our company, but their souls remain indifferent. They laugh when we are stolid. They weep when we are unmoved. Their gods and devils are not ours. -from Chapter VIIIn the years prior to World War I, American author FREDERICK O'BRIEN (1869-1932) took a grand tour of the South Pacific, and the trilogy of books he wrote upon his return sparked a new thirst for all things exotic, far-flung, and gloriously "uncivilized."The first of these volumes, 1919's White Shadows in the South Seas, was a tremendous bestseller in its day, and no wonder. O'Brien romances the people and the culture of the island of Marquesas with this account of the year of drowsy afternoons and nights lit by mysterious moonlight that he spent strolling its sandy shores and basking in its island breezes. But O'Brien's is no mere travelogue: though he introduces us to beautiful young island girls with names like Vanquished Often and Malicious Gossip and discusses the vagaries of native cuisine and the time-measuring power of cigarettes, he also debates himself about the good and the harm done by Western traders and Christian missionaries and ponders the legacy outside influence will have upon the island. O'Brien offers a unique perspective on the South Seas cultures of old just as they were disappearing.OF INTEREST TO: armchair travelers, amateur anthropologists, readers of cross-cultural studies

The falls of Fautaua, famed in Tahitian legend, are exquisite in beauty and surrounding, and so near Papeete that I walked to them and back in a day. Yet hardly any one goes there. For those who have visited them they remain a shrine of loveliness, wondrous in form and unsurpassed in color. Before the genius of Tahiti was smothered in the black and white of modernism, the falls and the valley in which they are, were the haunt of lovers who sought seclusion for their pledgings.A princess accompanied me to them. She was not a daughter of a king or queen, but she was near to royalty, and herself as aristocratic in carriage and manner as was Oberea, who loved Captain Cook. -from Chapter XIIIn the years prior to World War I, American author FREDERICK O'BRIEN (1869-1932) took a grand tour of the South Pacific, and the trilogy of books he wrote upon his return sparked a new thirst for all things exotic, far-flung, and gloriously "uncivilized."In the second of these volumes, 1921's Mystic Isles of the South Seas, O'Brien explores the "merriest, most fascinating world of all the cosmos": the islands of Tahiti and Moorea. This is no simple account of ships boarded and sights seen: O'Brien takes us along on his journey of the heart and soul, to a land where a dance is an expression of passion, the sea is a living being, and fishing is practically religion. But O'Brien also makes pointed and poignant note of the inevitable death of this world, to which Westerners introduced the evils of alcohol and Asians were coming to dominate the population. This is a unique perspective on the South Seas cultures of old just as they were disappearing.OF INTEREST TO: armchair travelers, amateur anthropologists, readers of cross-cultural studies

To those who love it, life in France may be a perpetual dream of enchantment. There is a sense of art everywhere, rarely to be met with except in Italy. Every Frenchman is an artist, and every place he enters, he makes his studio. It is surprising to see in the simplest, the most uneducated peasant, a knowledge and a sense of art or historical research, unheard of in our own country, or even in England. In short, France is France. Nobody can properly describe it to you if you have not been there. You must go and see it, and enjoy it for yourself.-from the PrefaceAmerican author and traveler CHARLES GIBSON (b. 1875) summered in France and turned his idyllic journeys into this agreeable travelogue, a portrait of a long-ago time when travel was a romantic adventure. Combining snippets of history and legend uncovered during explorations of ancient tombs, churches, and fortresses with enchanting descriptions of the villages and landscapes he visited, Gibson introduces us to both charming aristocrats who open their gothic chateaux to visitors and pleasant peasants who run quaint rural inns.First published in 1905, this is an enthralling work that continues to delight readers today.OF INTEREST TO: Francophiles, armchair travelers