Showing results by narrator "Charles Featherstone" in All Categories

Sound interesting? The author thinks so too! Listen to Alarms and Discursions and enjoy GK Chesterton's prolific writing.

Sound interesting? The author thinks so too! Listen to Alarms and Discursions and enjoy GK Chesterton's prolific writing.

There are artists out there able to lift the spirits of the downtrodden, who point towards a better world with all they are. Sometimes, they do this in DIY punk style: raw, unplugged, and deeply human. Patrick Schneeweis, better known as Pat the Bunny, is an artist who chose the road less travelled, instinctively deeming it more honest and less controlling. Freer. He grew up in Vermont, where he found people liked his voice and the controversial topics he tackled, and by 16 years old, he had released his first album ‘Fire Hazard’.

The tale of King Alfred, the Christian king who in 878AD battled a Viking invasion that had conquered the rest of England and burnt some cakes. He then became the last holdout of resistance against the invaders and forced the conversion of the Danish king Guthrum to Christianity after the battle of Ethandun.

The late 19th Century was a time of liberation. After the collapse of empires, people of all creeds demanded their equality. We begin with two speeches that represent the old order, by Bismarck. Between the two speeches he went from being Prussia’s last Minister President to being the Germany’s first Chancellor. A statesman in the oldest mold, he argues for nationalist dominance against forces temporal and religious.

In a utopian future society, where all social unrest has been engineered away, a man has an awakening. Starting as a happy worker drone, he meets a woman who reveals to him the reality of life outside the state's control - the glories of chaotic nature in the world and in the heart. They become entwined with a conspiracy against the state, and eventually try to escape beyond the walls of the state's control... only to meet betrayal, failure, and a dark ending in the glorious light of the state's total control.

The birth of liberation movements in the C19th saw a rise in fighting for the rights of workers. William Morris believed decries the belief “not that Commerce was made for man, but that man was made for Commerce”, with the profit motive that renders all work miserable when “It is right and necessary that all men should have work to do which shall be worth doing, and be of itself pleasant to do; and which should be done under such conditions as would make it neither over-wearisome nor over-anxious.”

History is often concentrated into short bursts of change, with long periods of shifting before and waves of alteration afterwards. Nowhere is this more obvious than the thirty year interregnum between the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. In this period, three figures stand tall; Pitt, the elder stateman who saw the need for genuine constitutionalism; Burke, the consummate parliamentarian, speaking for the glory of empire; and Robespierre, the legendary and controversial frontman of the French Revolution.

A unique elf ponders his ancestry. Taking in all the facts as they have been written, he finds the beliefs and practices of his species to be outdated and illogical. Inspired by his newfound scientific beliefs, Dante defies the old ways. He faces the wrath of his people and certain demise. He encounters an unlikely alien named Scrankles who has a strange attribute that panics the elders of Dante's people. Almost demon-like, Scrankles is an alien sentient feline being that bonds with Dante.

The last volume of Chesterton's collected essays, Gathered from the London Mercury, the New Witness, and the Illustrated London News, it is the only volume from after WWI, and is most serious, philosophical, and socially direct collection.

The Teachers of mankind are few. A thousand years may pass by without the advent of such a one; but when the True Teacher does appear, the distinguishing feature by which he is known is his life. His conduct is different from that of other men, and his teaching is never derived from any man or book, but from his own life. The Teacher first lives, and then teaches others how they may likewise live. The proof and witness of his teaching is in himself, his life.

In this unusual departure from his usual practical and direct style, Allen here writes a series of thoughtful, reflective and inspirational poems laying out his unique thoughts in a new style. Spiritual, secular, and deeply embedded in the genuine practice of faith, the book begins with Eolaus, an extended work following a man struggling through the depths of his spiritual sorrow, comforted and assailed by the vocies of earth and nature.

A deeper dive into the territory covered in Allen's most popular and enduring work. Written in the year of his death, and nine years after the success of As A Man Thinketh allowed the gentle and practical Victorian philosopher to dedicate himself to writing, Out From The Heart, Allen goes into more practical detail than ever before about how to realise the personal growth journey in your own life.

Let this beautiful book of affirmations guide and soothe your day. Soft, profound, reflective, and beautiful, they perfectly embody James Allen's integrated and spiritual life. Thirty-one thoughts for the beginning and end of the day from one of the original pioneers of the self-help movement, these softly spoken and hypnotically beautiful passages are set to gentle music to help you internalise and sublimate thoughts and habits of right action.

The Rapture, a Christian term, is allegory for a natural cyclic evolutionary process that materializes internally deep in the Mind when corruption and lawlessness overtake the societal norm and decay sets in. This “new Man” (the developing Mental structure) begins replacing the outer world authorities at all levels of society, revealing a process of “God’s Eternal Kingdom” descending into the World, creating a “Heavenly Government on Earth”.

A guide to life from one of the very first self-help authors, deeply immersed in both humble Christian living and Buddhism.

A fascinating mix of Christian, Buddhist, and Daoist thought presented by the original self-help guru in 1910.

’Jane ’came out’ at fifty-seven and everybody knew it.’ So begins this heartwarming tale of a courteous country maid who comes into a vast inheritance, and uses it to travel into high society in London. along the way, she encounters the snobs of the society set, royalty entirely without regality, and a whole host of characters that make clear just how much better off she is away from the glitz and glamour.

Marie Corelli, the Victorian novelist beloved of Gladstone, Churchill and Victoria herself, topped the bestseller charts through her whole career. This tale of romance, mystery, and foolish tourism was published in 1897, the same year in which Bram Stoker wrote Dracula. In her inimitable style, she weaves together dark romance, the paranormal, savage social commentary, ridiculous but entirely believable characters, and more in an energetic ride through the 'Society Set' as they take the season in Cairo.

Niels Klim's Underground Travels, originally published in Latin as Nicolai Klimii Iter Subterraneum (1741), is a satirical science-fiction/fantasy novel written by the Norwegian-Danish author Ludvig Holberg. His only novel, it describes a utopian society from an outsider's point of view, and often pokes fun at diverse cultural and social topics such as morality, science, sexual equality, religion, governments, and philosophy.