Kant's Prolegomena and Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science

Kant's Prolegomena and Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science by Immanuel Kant, translated by Ernest Belfort Bax

This book includes a discussion of Kant's life and career and then two of his shorter works.

Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics That Will Be Able to Present Itself as a Science (1783)

A brief introduction to metaphysics and defense of Kant's writings. This is written as more of a discussion of philosophy and Kant's thought and metaphysics.

Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (1786)

This shorter work reads more as a math and science book. There are discussions about gravity and other similar physical phenomena and how these are built on metaphysics

Life on the Mississippi

Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain

Mark Twain's writing is fresh and witty, even a century and half later. This is a memoir by Twain that focuses on his experiences on the Mississippi. Boats going between Cairo and New Orleans were a primary means of mobility in the pre-railroad era. They were so dominate, that a union of pilots could extract extremely high wages and salaries. This all came to an end when railroads and barges started plying the waters. 

He provides many insights of the river towns of the day. Near the end, he explores the "upper Mississippi" above St. Louis. These cities were growing quickly, from nothing to tens of thousands people. Great sunrises can be seen from cities like Muscatine. Railroad bridges now cross in multiple places. It is a study in technology and growth.

Twain includes historical background and personal experiences as well as many insights and observations. This is a great source of historical information as well as an entertaining read.

Great Classic Stories 2

The ones that stuck out as being good in this collection were
Young Goodman Brown: He wanted to be good, but saw that everyone that he respected was in cohorts with the devil. It also made me wonder what happened to the deep religiousity form early New England. Will the other super religious areas change that way also?
How I Edited An Agricultural Paper: A great Mark Twain humor piece that I had not read before.
A Piece of String : A small thing ends up leading to dire consequences (watch out for strings!)
Head and Shoulders: life intervenes, and roles switch, with the academic's showgirl wife eventually attracting his past intellectual idol.
I didn't like Nuns at Luncheon or Cousin William.

The stories:
Young Goodman Brown (Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1835)
The Cask of Amontillado (Edgar Allan Poe, 1846)
Cousin William (Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1855)
How I Edited An Agricultural Paper (Mark Twain, 1870)
A Piece of String (Guy de Maupassant, 1883)
Angela, An Inverted Love Story (W.S. Gilbert, 1890)
Oh! The Public (Anton Chekhov, 1885)
The Nightingale and the Rose (Oscar Wilde, 1888)
The Story of an Hour (Kate Chopin, 1894)
A Coward (Edith Wharton, 1899)
A Jury of Her Peers (Susan Glaspell, 1917)
Araby (James Joyce, 1914)
The Mark on the Wall (Virginia Woolf, 1917)
The Interlopers (Saki, 1919)
Head and Shoulders (F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1920)
The Stranger (Katherine Mansfield, 1921)
The Blind Man (D.H. Lawrence, 1922)
Nuns at Luncheon (Aldous Huxley, 1922)

Treasure island

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson 

In spite of "knowing" much of this novel, I felt lost in narrative. I found other books like Robinson Crusoe to do a much better job in the "sailing" genre. Well, time to go to Long John Silver's and get some fish.