Read the excerpt from "Benin Plaque: The Oba with Europeans.”Many wild theories were put forward. It was thought that the plaques must have come from ancient Egypt, or perhaps that the people of Benin were one of the lost tribes of Israel. Or the sculptures must have derived from European influence (after all, these were the contemporaries of Michelangelo, Donatello and Cellini). But research quickly established that the Benin plaques were entirely West African creations, made without European influence. The Europeans had to revisit, and to overhaul, their assumptions of easy cultural superiority.
Read the excerpt from Enrique’s Journey.Hours later, the Red Cross asked Cancino if he could help an injured migrant. It was the same Honduran teenager. His right ribs were broken. His entire chest and face were badly bruised. He spoke slowly, in a whisper, clasping his chest. Two gangsters had overheard his description and kicked him mercilessly. "Next time, we kill you," the gangsters told him. The teenager, afraid for his life, asked to be deported.Read the excerpt from "Children of the Drug Wars."But, as I learned when I returned to Nueva Suyapa last month, a vast majority of child migrants are fleeing not poverty, but violence.
Read the excerpt from chapter 7 of Night.We all got up. We all pulled our soaked blankets tighter around our shoulders. And we tried to take a few steps, to shuffle back and forth, in place.Suddenly, a cry rose in the wagon, the cry of a wounded animal. Someone had just died.Others, close to death, imitated his cry. And their cries seemed to come from beyond the grave. Soon everybody was crying. Groaning. Moaning. Cries of distress hurled into the wind and the snow.The lament spread from wagon to wagon. It was contagious. And now hundreds of cries rose at once. The death rattle of an entire convoy with the end approaching. All boundaries had been crossed. Nobody had any strength left. And the night seemed endless.
Read the excerpt from The Time Traveler’s Guide to Elizabethan England.For the vast majority of yeomen in the country, it is vitally important to store hard fruit through the whole year. To do this, select faultless apples and pears without a bruise or other mark, and leave a length of stalk on them. Place them carefully in your fruit house or "hoard house” on clean dry straw, make sure they are not touching each other, and turn them very carefully every month to avoid their collecting moisture. And, most important, keep the door to the fruit house shut, "lest children make havoc there.”
Read the excerpt from "Politics and the English Language" by George Orwell.I said earlier that the decadence of our language is probably curable. Those who deny this would argue, if they produced an argument at all, that language merely reflects existing social conditions, and that we cannot influence its development by any direct tinkering with words and constructions. So far as the general tone or spirit of a language goes, this may be true, but it is not true in detail. Silly words and expressions have often disappeared, not through any evolutionary process but owing to the conscious action of a minority. Two recent examples were explore every avenue and leave no stone unturned, which were killed by the jeers of a few journalists.
Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World.B.C.8000–7000First planting of wild sugar cane, on the island of New Guinea6000Sugar cane reaches the Philippines1500–900Sugar cane used in Hindu ceremonies described in oral traditions that date from around this time515According to the Greek author Herodotus, the Persians had found what may be sugar cane in what is now India and Pakistan327Nearchus, friend of Alexander the Great, again mentions the reed that makes honey without bees, in India286First mention of sugar cane in China
Read the excerpt from Utopia.I never saw a clearer instance of the opposite impressions that different customs make on people than I observed in the ambassadors of the Anemolians, who came to Amaurot when I was there. As they came to treat of affairs of great consequence, the deputies from several towns met together to wait for their coming. The ambassadors of the nations that lie near Utopia, knowing their customs, and that fine clothes are in no esteem among them, that silk is despised, and gold is a badge of infamy, used to come very modestly clothed; but the Anemolians, lying more remote, and having had little commerce with them, understanding that they were coarsely clothed, and all in the same manner, took it for granted that they had none of those fine things among them of which they made no use; and they, being a vainglorious rather than a wise people, resolved to set themselves out with so much pomp that they should look like gods, and strike the eyes of the poor Utopians with their splendour.
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