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Books published by publisher Books On Demand

  • The Family among the Australian Aborigines: A Sociological Study

    Bronislaw Malinowski

    language (Books on Demand, Nov. 22, 2018)
    The importance of the subject treated in this study, as well as the prominent part played by the Australian evidence in the problem of kinship, will, it is believed, amply justify a detailed inquiry into the institution of the family in Australia. It is, however, always desirable for a monograph like the present one, besides being a mere collection and description of facts, to have a sufficiently wide theoretical scope. It ought to demonstrate some general principle upon the particular example treated, and to approach the problem from a new standpoint.I wish here shortly to indicate how far a slight and imperfect attempt in this direction has been made. In describing the facts of family life in Australia I have tried to show that even if the problems of origins and development of an institution be put aside and the inquiry be limited to the actual facts (in this case to the actual working of the aboriginal kinship organization), there are plenty of subjects of great theoretical importance, some of which, as yet not fully considered by sociologists. On the other hand, I have tried to show that in dealing with purely sociological problems it is necessary, in order to do justice to the complexity and fulness of social phenomena, to draw into the field of inquiry a series of facts often hitherto partially or completely neglected. The facts of daily life, the emotional side of family relations, the magico-religious ideas of the aborigines about kinship and sexual relations, customary as well as legal norms-all these factors must be taken impartially into careful consideration in order to give the full picture of an institution as it embraces living man in a living society. In other words each social institution must be studied in all its complex social functions as well as in its reflexion in the collective psychology.
  • The Light Princess

    George Macdonald

    eBook (Books on Demand, March 19, 2019)
    Once upon a time, so long ago that I have quite forgotten the date, there lived a king and queen who had no children.And the king said to himself, "All the queens of my acquaintance have children, some three, some seven, and some as many as twelve; and my queen has not one. I feel ill-used." So he made up his mind to be cross with his wife about it. But she bore it all like a good patient queen as she was. Then the king grew very cross indeed. But the queen pretended to take it all as a joke, and a very good one too."Why don't you have any daughters, at least?" said he. "I don't say sons; that might be too much to expect.""I am sure, dear king, I am very sorry," said the queen."So you ought to be," retorted the king; "you are not going to make a virtue of that, surely."But he was not an ill-tempered king, and in any matter of less moment would have let the queen have her own way with all his heart. This, however, was an affair of state.The queen smiled."You must have patience with a lady, you know, dear king," said she.She was, indeed, a very nice queen, and heartily sorry that she could not oblige the king immediately.
  • The Enchanted Castle

    E. Nesbit

    eBook (Books on Demand, March 12, 2019)
    There were three of them-Jerry, Jimmy, and Kathleen. Of course, Jerry's name was Gerald, and not Jeremiah, whatever you may think; and Jimmy's name was James; and Kathleen was never called by her name at all, but Cathy, or Catty, or Puss Cat, when her brothers were pleased with her, and Scratch Cat when they were not pleased. And they were at school in a little town in the West of England-the boys at one school, of course, and the girl at another, because the sensible habit of having boys and girls at the same school is not yet as common as I hope it will be some day. They used to see each other on Saturdays and Sundays at the house of a kind maiden lady; but it was one of those houses where it is impossible to play. You know the kind of house, don't you? There is a sort of a something about that kind of house that makes you hardly able even to talk to each other when you are left alone, and playing seems unnatural and affected. So they looked forward to the holidays, when they should all go home and be together all day long, in a house where playing was natural and conversation possible, and where the Hampshire forests and fields were full of interesting things to do and see.
  • Moonfleet

    John Meade Falkner

    eBook (Books on Demand, June 12, 2019)
    The village of Moonfleet lies half a mile from the sea on the right or west bank of the Fleet stream. This rivulet, which is so narrow as it passes the houses that I have known a good jumper clear it without a pole, broadens out into salt marshes below the village, and loses itself at last in a lake of brackish water. The lake is good for nothing except sea-fowl, herons, and oysters, and forms such a place as they call in the Indies a lagoon; being shut off from the open Channel by a monstrous great beach or dike of pebbles, of which I shall speak more hereafter. When I was a child I thought that this place was called Moonfleet, because on a still night, whether in summer, or in winter frosts, the moon shone very brightly on the lagoon; but learned afterwards that 'twas but short for 'Mohune-fleet', from the Mohunes, a great family who were once lords of all these parts. My name is John Trenchard, and I was fifteen years of age when this story begins. My father and mother had both been dead for years, and I boarded with my aunt, Miss Arnold, who was kind to me in her own fashion, but too strict and precise ever to make me love her.
  • The Tale of Benjamin Bunny

    Beatrix Potter

    eBook (Books on Demand, Jan. 4, 2019)
    "...One morning a little rabbit sat on a bank.He pricked his ears and listened to the trit-trot, trit-trot of a pony.A gig was coming along the road; it was driven by Mr. McGregor, and beside him sat Mrs. McGregor in her best bonnet.As soon as they had passed, little Benjamin Bunny slid down into the road, and set off-with a hop, skip, and a jump-to call upon his relations, who lived in the wood at the back of Mr. McGregor's garden..."
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  • The Ball and the Cross

    G.K. Chesterton

    eBook (Books on Demand, April 25, 2019)
    The flying ship of Professor Lucifer sang through the skies like a silver arrow; the bleak white steel of it, gleaming in the bleak blue emptiness of the evening. That it was far above the earth was no expression for it; to the two men in it, it seemed to be far above the stars. The professor had himself invented the flying machine, and had also invented nearly everything in it. Every sort of tool or apparatus had, in consequence, to the full, that fantastic and distorted look which belongs to the miracles of science. For the world of science and evolution is far more nameless and elusive and like a dream than the world of poetry and religion; since in the latter images and ideas remain themselves eternally, while it is the whole idea of evolution that identities melt into each other as they do in a nightmare.
  • She

    H. Rider Haggard

    eBook (Books on Demand, May 14, 2019)
    There are some events of which each circumstance and surrounding detail seems to be graven on the memory in such fashion that we cannot forget it, and so it is with the scene that I am about to describe. It rises as clearly before my mind at this moment as though it had happened but yesterday.It was in this very month something over twenty years ago that I, Ludwig Horace Holly, was sitting one night in my rooms at Cambridge, grinding away at some mathematical work, I forget what. I was to go up for my fellowship within a week, and was expected by my tutor and my college generally to distinguish myself. At last, wearied out, I flung my book down, and, going to the mantelpiece, took down a pipe and filled it. There was a candle burning on the mantelpiece, and a long, narrow glass at the back of it; and as I was in the act of lighting the pipe I caught sight of my own countenance in the glass, and paused to reflect. The lighted match burnt away till it scorched my fingers, forcing me to drop it; but still I stood and stared at myself in the glass, and reflected."Well," I said aloud, at last, "it is to be hoped that I shall be able to do something with the inside of my head, for I shall certainly never do anything by the help of the outside."
  • Andersen's Fairy Tales

    H. C. Andersen

    eBook (Books on Demand, April 30, 2019)
    Many years ago, there was an Emperor, who was so excessively fond of new clothes, that he spent all his money in dress. He did not trouble himself in the least about his soldiers; nor did he care to go either to the theatre or the chase, except for the opportunities then afforded him for displaying his new clothes. He had a different suit for each hour of the day; and as of any other king or emperor, one is accustomed to say, "he is sitting in council," it was always said of him, "The Emperor is sitting in his wardrobe."Time passed merrily in the large town which was his capital; strangers arrived every day at the court. One day, two rogues, calling themselves weavers, made their appearance. They gave out that they knew how to weave stuffs of the most beautiful colors and elaborate patterns, the clothes manufactured from which should have the wonderful property of remaining invisible to everyone who was unfit for the office he held, or who was extraordinarily simple in character.
  • The Raven illustrated by Gustave Doré

    Edgar Allan Poe

    eBook (Books on Demand, Dec. 28, 2018)
    In the following pages, we have a fresh example of an artist's genius characterizing his interpretation of a famous poem. Gustave Doré, the last work of whose pencil is before us, was not the painter, or even the draughtsman, for realists demanding truth of tone, figure, and perfection. Such matters concerned him less than to make shape and distance, light and shade, assist his purpose,-which was to excite the soul, the imagination, of the looker on. This he did by arousing our sense of awe, through marvellous and often sublime conceptions of things unutterable and full of gloom or glory. It is well said that if his works were not great paintings, as pictures they are great indeed. As a "literary artist," and such he was, his force was in direct ratio with the dramatic invention of his author, with the brave audacities of the spirit that kindled his own.
  • Our mutual Friend

    Charles Dickens

    eBook (Books on Demand, April 23, 2019)
    Our Mutual Friend, written in the years 1864-65, is the last novel completed by Charles Dickens and is one of his most sophisticated works, combining savage satire with social analysis.It centres on, in the words of critic J. Hillis Miller, quoting from the character Bella Wilfer in the book, "money, money, money, and what money can make of life."(from wikipedia.org)
  • The Master Builder

    Henrik Ibsen

    eBook (Books on Demand, March 27, 2019)
    With The Master Builder-or Master Builder Solness, as the title runs in the original-we enter upon the final stage in Ibsen's career. "You are essentially right," the poet wrote to Count Prozor in March 1900, "when you say that the series which closes with the Epilogue (When We Dead Awaken) began with Master Builder Solness.""Ibsen," says Dr. Brahm, "wrote in Christiania all the four works which he thus seems to bracket together-Solness, Eyolf, Borkman, and When We Dead Awaken. He returned to Norway in July 1891, for a stay of indefinite length; but the restless wanderer over Europe was destined to leave his home no more.... He had not returned, however, to throw himself, as of old, into the battle of the passing day. Polemics are entirely absent from the poetry of his old age. He leaves the State and Society at peace. He who had departed as the creator of Falk [in Love's Comedy] now, on his return, gazes into the secret places of human nature and the wonder of his own soul."
  • The Lady with the Dog

    Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

    eBook (Books on Demand, Dec. 4, 2018)
    IT was said that a new person had appeared on the sea-front: a lady with a little dog. Dmitri Dmitritch Gurov, who had by then been a fortnight at Yalta, and so was fairly at home there, had begun to take an interest in new arrivals. Sitting in Verney's pavilion, he saw, walking on the sea-front, a fair-haired young lady of medium height, wearing a béret; a white Pomeranian dog was running behind her.And afterwards he met her in the public gardens and in the square several times a day. She was walking alone, always wearing the same béret, and always with the same white dog; no one knew who she was, and every one called her simply "the lady with the dog."