Lord Bolingbroke - "Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope"

Anton Chekhov - "Letters of Anton Chekhov"

Byron J. Rees - "The Heart Cry of Jesus"

Unknown - "The First 100,000 Prime Numbers"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses

V >> Various >> U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses




These are some of the things we ought to do, and not leave the others
undone, the old-fashioned, never-to-be-neglected, fundamental
safeguarding of property and of individual right. This is the high
enterprise of the new day: To lift everything that concerns our life as
a Nation to the light that shines from the hearthfire of every man's
conscience and vision of the right. It is inconceivable that we should
do this as partisans; it is inconceivable we should do it in ignorance
of the facts as they are or in blind haste. We shall restore, not
destroy. We shall deal with our economic system as it is and as it may
be modified, not as it might be if we had a clean sheet of paper to
write upon; and step by step we shall make it what it should be, in the
spirit of those who question their own wisdom and seek counsel and
knowledge, not shallow self-satisfaction or the excitement of excursions
whither they can not tell. Justice, and only justice, shall always be
our motto.

And yet it will be no cool process of mere science. The Nation has been
deeply stirred, stirred by a solemn passion, stirred by the knowledge of
wrong, of ideals lost, of government too often debauched and made an
instrument of evil. The feelings with which we face this new age of
right and opportunity sweep across our heartstrings like some air out of
God's own presence, where justice and mercy are reconciled and the judge
and the brother are one. We know our task to be no mere task of politics
but a task which shall search us through and through, whether we be able
to understand our time and the need of our people, whether we be indeed
their spokesmen and interpreters, whether we have the pure heart to
comprehend and the rectified will to choose our high course of action.

This is not a day of triumph; it is a day of dedication. Here muster,
not the forces of party, but the forces of humanity. Men's hearts wait
upon us; men's lives hang in the balance; men's hopes call upon us to
say what we will do. Who shall live up to the great trust? Who dares
fail to try? I summon all honest men, all patriotic, all forward-looking
men, to my side. God helping me, I will not fail them, if they will but
counsel and sustain me!


***

Woodrow Wilson
Second Inaugural Address
Monday, March 5, 1917

My Fellow Citizens:

THE four years which have elapsed since last I stood in this place have
been crowded with counsel and action of the most vital interest and
consequence. Perhaps no equal period in our history has been so fruitful
of important reforms in our economic and industrial life or so full of
significant changes in the spirit and purpose of our political action.
We have sought very thoughtfully to set our house in order, correct the
grosser errors and abuses of our industrial life, liberate and quicken
the processes of our national genius and energy, and lift our politics
to a broader view of the people's essential interests.

It is a record of singular variety and singular distinction. But I shall
not attempt to review it. It speaks for itself and will be of increasing
influence as the years go by. This is not the time for retrospect. It is
time rather to speak our thoughts and purposes concerning the present
and the immediate future.

Although we have centered counsel and action with such unusual
concentration and success upon the great problems of domestic
legislation to which we addressed ourselves four years ago, other
matters have more and more forced themselves upon our attention--matters
lying outside our own life as a nation and over which we had no control,
but which, despite our wish to keep free of them, have drawn us more and
more irresistibly into their own current and influence.

It has been impossible to avoid them. They have affected the life of the
whole world. They have shaken men everywhere with a passion and an
apprehension they never knew before. It has been hard to preserve calm
counsel while the thought of our own people swayed this way and that
under their influence. We are a composite and cosmopolitan people. We
are of the blood of all the nations that are at war. The currents of our
thoughts as well as the currents of our trade run quick at all seasons
back and forth between us and them. The war inevitably set its mark from
the first alike upon our minds, our industries, our commerce, our
politics and our social action. To be indifferent to it, or independent
of it, was out of the question.

And yet all the while we have been conscious that we were not part of
it. In that consciousness, despite many divisions, we have drawn closer
together. We have been deeply wronged upon the seas, but we have not
wished to wrong or injure in return; have retained throughout the
consciousness of standing in some sort apart, intent upon an interest
that transcended the immediate issues of the war itself.

As some of the injuries done us have become intolerable we have still
been clear that we wished nothing for ourselves that we were not ready
to demand for all mankind--fair dealing, justice, the freedom to live
and to be at ease against organized wrong.

It is in this spirit and with this thought that we have grown more and
more aware, more and more certain that the part we wished to play was
the part of those who mean to vindicate and fortify peace. We have been
obliged to arm ourselves to make good our claim to a certain minimum of
right and of freedom of action. We stand firm in armed neutrality since
it seems that in no other way we can demonstrate what it is we insist
upon and cannot forget. We may even be drawn on, by circumstances, not
by our own purpose or desire, to a more active assertion of our rights
as we see them and a more immediate association with the great struggle
itself. But nothing will alter our thought or our purpose. They are too
clear to be obscured. They are too deeply rooted in the principles of
our national life to be altered. We desire neither conquest nor
advantage. We wish nothing that can be had only at the cost of another
people. We always professed unselfish purpose and we covet the
opportunity to prove our professions are sincere.

There are many things still to be done at home, to clarify our own
politics and add new vitality to the industrial processes of our own
life, and we shall do them as time and opportunity serve, but we realize
that the greatest things that remain to be done must be done with the
whole world for stage and in cooperation with the wide and universal
forces of mankind, and we are making our spirits ready for those things.

We are provincials no longer. The tragic events of the thirty months of
vital turmoil through which we have just passed have made us citizens of
the world. There can be no turning back. Our own fortunes as a nation
are involved whether we would have it so or not.

And yet we are not the less Americans on that account. We shall be the
more American if we but remain true to the principles in which we have
been bred. They are not the principles of a province or of a single
continent. We have known and boasted all along that they were the
principles of a liberated mankind. These, therefore, are the things we
shall stand for, whether in war or in peace:

That all nations are equally interested in the peace of the world and in
the political stability of free peoples, and equally responsible for
their maintenance; that the essential principle of peace is the actual
equality of nations in all matters of right or privilege; that peace
cannot securely or justly rest upon an armed balance of power; that
governments derive all their just powers from the consent of the
governed and that no other powers should be supported by the common
thought, purpose or power of the family of nations; that the seas should
be equally free and safe for the use of all peoples, under rules set up
by common agreement and consent, and that, so far as practicable, they
should be accessible to all upon equal terms; that national armaments
shall be limited to the necessities of national order and domestic
safety; that the community of interest and of power upon which peace
must henceforth depend imposes upon each nation the duty of seeing to it
that all influences proceeding from its own citizens meant to encourage
or assist revolution in other states should be sternly and effectually
suppressed and prevented.

I need not argue these principles to you, my fellow countrymen; they are
your own part and parcel of your own thinking and your own motives in
affairs. They spring up native amongst us. Upon this as a platform of
purpose and of action we can stand together. And it is imperative that
we should stand together. We are being forged into a new unity amidst
the fires that now blaze throughout the world. In their ardent heat we
shall, in God's Providence, let us hope, be purged of faction and
division, purified of the errant humors of party and of private
interest, and shall stand forth in the days to come with a new dignity
of national pride and spirit. Let each man see to it that the dedication
is in his own heart, the high purpose of the nation in his own mind,
ruler of his own will and desire.

I stand here and have taken the high and solemn oath to which you have
been audience because the people of the United States have chosen me for
this august delegation of power and have by their gracious judgment
named me their leader in affairs.

I know now what the task means. I realize to the full the responsibility
which it involves. I pray God I may be given the wisdom and the prudence
to do my duty in the true spirit of this great people. I am their
servant and can succeed only as they sustain and guide me by their
confidence and their counsel. The thing I shall count upon, the thing
without which neither counsel nor action will avail, is the unity of
America--an America united in feeling, in purpose and in its vision of
duty, of opportunity and of service.

We are to beware of all men who would turn the tasks and the necessities
of the nation to their own private profit or use them for the building
up of private power.

United alike in the conception of our duty and in the high resolve to
perform it in the face of all men, let us dedicate ourselves to the
great task to which we must now set our hand. For myself I beg your
tolerance, your countenance and your united aid.

The shadows that now lie dark upon our path will soon be dispelled, and
we shall walk with the light all about us if we be but true to
ourselves--to ourselves as we have wished to be known in the counsels of
the world and in the thought of all those who love liberty and justice
and the right exalted.


***

Warren G. Harding
Inaugural Address
Friday, March 4, 1921

My Countrymen:

WHEN one surveys the world about him after the great storm, noting the
marks of destruction and yet rejoicing in the ruggedness of the things
which withstood it, if he is an American he breathes the clarified
atmosphere with a strange mingling of regret and new hope. We have seen
a world passion spend its fury, but we contemplate our Republic
unshaken, and hold our civilization secure. Liberty--liberty within the
law--and civilization are inseparable, and though both were threatened
we find them now secure; and there comes to Americans the profound
assurance that our representative government is the highest expression
and surest guaranty of both.

Standing in this presence, mindful of the solemnity of this occasion,
feeling the emotions which no one may know until he senses the great
weight of responsibility for himself, I must utter my belief in the
divine inspiration of the founding fathers. Surely there must have been
God's intent in the making of this new-world Republic. Ours is an
organic law which had but one ambiguity, and we saw that effaced in a
baptism of sacrifice and blood, with union maintained, the Nation
supreme, and its concord inspiring. We have seen the world rivet its
hopeful gaze on the great truths on which the founders wrought. We have
seen civil, human, and religious liberty verified and glorified. In the
beginning the Old World scoffed at our experiment; today our foundations
of political and social belief stand unshaken, a precious inheritance to
ourselves, an inspiring example of freedom and civilization to all
mankind. Let us express renewed and strengthened devotion, in grateful
reverence for the immortal beginning, and utter our confidence in the
supreme fulfillment.

The recorded progress of our Republic, materially and spiritually, in
itself proves the wisdom of the inherited policy of noninvolvement in
Old World affairs. Confident of our ability to work out our own destiny,
and jealously guarding our right to do so, we seek no part in directing
the destinies of the Old World. We do not mean to be entangled. We will
accept no responsibility except as our own conscience and judgment, in
each instance, may determine.

Our eyes never will be blind to a developing menace, our ears never deaf
to the call of civilization. We recognize the new order in the world,
with the closer contacts which progress has wrought. We sense the call
of the human heart for fellowship, fraternity, and cooperation. We crave
friendship and harbor no hate. But America, our America, the America
builded on the foundation laid by the inspired fathers, can be a party
to no permanent military alliance. It can enter into no political
commitments, nor assume any economic obligations which will subject our
decisions to any other than our own authority.

I am sure our own people will not misunderstand, nor will the world
misconstrue. We have no thought to impede the paths to closer
relationship. We wish to promote understanding. We want to do our part
in making offensive warfare so hateful that Governments and peoples who
resort to it must prove the righteousness of their cause or stand as
outlaws before the bar of civilization.

We are ready to associate ourselves with the nations of the world, great
and small, for conference, for counsel; to seek the expressed views of
world opinion; to recommend a way to approximate disarmament and relieve
the crushing burdens of military and naval establishments. We elect to
participate in suggesting plans for mediation, conciliation, and
arbitration, and would gladly join in that expressed conscience of
progress, which seeks to clarify and write the laws of international
relationship, and establish a world court for the disposition of such
justiciable questions as nations are agreed to submit thereto. In
expressing aspirations, in seeking practical plans, in translating
humanity's new concept of righteousness and justice and its hatred of
war into recommended action we are ready most heartily to unite, but
every commitment must be made in the exercise of our national
sovereignty. Since freedom impelled, and independence inspired, and
nationality exalted, a world supergovernment is contrary to everything
we cherish and can have no sanction by our Republic. This is not
selfishness, it is sanctity. It is not aloofness, it is security. It is
not suspicion of others, it is patriotic adherence to the things which
made us what we are.

Today, better than ever before, we know the aspirations of humankind,
and share them. We have come to a new realization of our place in the
world and a new appraisal of our Nation by the world. The unselfishness
of these United States is a thing proven; our devotion to peace for
ourselves and for the world is well established; our concern for
preserved civilization has had its impassioned and heroic expression.
There was no American failure to resist the attempted reversion of
civilization; there will be no failure today or tomorrow.

The success of our popular government rests wholly upon the correct
interpretation of the deliberate, intelligent, dependable popular will
of America. In a deliberate questioning of a suggested change of
national policy, where internationality was to supersede nationality, we
turned to a referendum, to the American people. There was ample
discussion, and there is a public mandate in manifest understanding.

America is ready to encourage, eager to initiate, anxious to participate
in any seemly program likely to lessen the probability of war, and
promote that brotherhood of mankind which must be God's highest
conception of human relationship. Because we cherish ideals of justice
and peace, because we appraise international comity and helpful
relationship no less highly than any people of the world, we aspire to a
high place in the moral leadership of civilization, and we hold a
maintained America, the proven Republic, the unshaken temple of
representative democracy, to be not only an inspiration and example, but
the highest agency of strengthening good will and promoting accord on
both continents.

Mankind needs a world-wide benediction of understanding. It is needed
among individuals, among peoples, among governments, and it will
inaugurate an era of good feeling to make the birth of a new order. In
such understanding men will strive confidently for the promotion of
their better relationships and nations will promote the comities so
essential to peace.

We must understand that ties of trade bind nations in closest intimacy,
and none may receive except as he gives. We have not strengthened ours
in accordance with our resources or our genius, notably on our own
continent, where a galaxy of Republics reflects the glory of new-world
democracy, but in the new order of finance and trade we mean to promote
enlarged activities and seek expanded confidence.

Perhaps we can make no more helpful contribution by example than prove a
Republic's capacity to emerge from the wreckage of war. While the
world's embittered travail did not leave us devastated lands nor
desolated cities, left no gaping wounds, no breast with hate, it did
involve us in the delirium of expenditure, in expanded currency and
credits, in unbalanced industry, in unspeakable waste, and disturbed
relationships. While it uncovered our portion of hateful selfishness at
home, it also revealed the heart of America as sound and fearless, and
beating in confidence unfailing.

Amid it all we have riveted the gaze of all civilization to the
unselfishness and the righteousness of representative democracy, where
our freedom never has made offensive warfare, never has sought
territorial aggrandizement through force, never has turned to the
arbitrament of arms until reason has been exhausted. When the
Governments of the earth shall have established a freedom like our own
and shall have sanctioned the pursuit of peace as we have practiced it,
I believe the last sorrow and the final sacrifice of international
warfare will have been written.

Let me speak to the maimed and wounded soldiers who are present today,
and through them convey to their comrades the gratitude of the Republic
for their sacrifices in its defense. A generous country will never
forget the services you rendered, and you may hope for a policy under
Government that will relieve any maimed successors from taking your
places on another such occasion as this.

Our supreme task is the resumption of our onward, normal way.
Reconstruction, readjustment, restoration all these must follow. I would
like to hasten them. If it will lighten the spirit and add to the
resolution with which we take up the task, let me repeat for our Nation,
we shall give no people just cause to make war upon us; we hold no
national prejudices; we entertain no spirit of revenge; we do not hate;
we do not covet; we dream of no conquest, nor boast of armed prowess.

If, despite this attitude, war is again forced upon us, I earnestly hope
a way may be found which will unify our individual and collective
strength and consecrate all America, materially and spiritually, body
and soul, to national defense. I can vision the ideal republic, where
every man and woman is called under the flag for assignment to duty for
whatever service, military or civic, the individual is best fitted;
where we may call to universal service every plant, agency, or facility,
all in the sublime sacrifice for country, and not one penny of war
profit shall inure to the benefit of private individual, corporation, or
combination, but all above the normal shall flow into the defense chest
of the Nation. There is something inherently wrong, something out of
accord with the ideals of representative democracy, when one portion of
our citizenship turns its activities to private gain amid defensive war
while another is fighting, sacrificing, or dying for national
preservation.

Out of such universal service will come a new unity of spirit and
purpose, a new confidence and consecration, which would make our defense
impregnable, our triumph assured. Then we should have little or no
disorganization of our economic, industrial, and commercial systems at
home, no staggering war debts, no swollen fortunes to flout the
sacrifices of our soldiers, no excuse for sedition, no pitiable
slackerism, no outrage of treason. Envy and jealousy would have no soil
for their menacing development, and revolution would be without the
passion which engenders it.

A regret for the mistakes of yesterday must not, however, blind us to
the tasks of today. War never left such an aftermath. There has been
staggering loss of life and measureless wastage of materials. Nations
are still groping for return to stable ways. Discouraging indebtedness
confronts us like all the war-torn nations, and these obligations must
be provided for. No civilization can survive repudiation.

We can reduce the abnormal expenditures, and we will. We can strike at
war taxation, and we must. We must face the grim necessity, with full
knowledge that the task is to be solved, and we must proceed with a full
realization that no statute enacted by man can repeal the inexorable
laws of nature. Our most dangerous tendency is to expect too much of
government, and at the same time do for it too little. We contemplate
the immediate task of putting our public household in order. We need a
rigid and yet sane economy, combined with fiscal justice, and it must be
attended by individual prudence and thrift, which are so essential to
this trying hour and reassuring for the future.

The business world reflects the disturbance of war's reaction. Herein
flows the lifeblood of material existence. The economic mechanism is
intricate and its parts interdependent, and has suffered the shocks and
jars incident to abnormal demands, credit inflations, and price
upheavals. The normal balances have been impaired, the channels of
distribution have been clogged, the relations of labor and management
have been strained. We must seek the readjustment with care and courage.
Our people must give and take. Prices must reflect the receding fever of
war activities. Perhaps we never shall know the old levels of wages
again, because war invariably readjusts compensations, and the
necessaries of life will show their inseparable relationship, but we
must strive for normalcy to reach stability. All the penalties will not
be light, nor evenly distributed. There is no way of making them so.
There is no instant step from disorder to order. We must face a
condition of grim reality, charge off our losses and start afresh. It is
the oldest lesson of civilization. I would like government to do all it
can to mitigate; then, in understanding, in mutuality of interest, in
concern for the common good, our tasks will be solved. No altered system
will work a miracle. Any wild experiment will only add to the confusion.
Our best assurance lies in efficient administration of our proven
system.

The forward course of the business cycle is unmistakable. Peoples are
turning from destruction to production. Industry has sensed the changed
order and our own people are turning to resume their normal, onward way.
The call is for productive America to go on. I know that Congress and
the Administration will favor every wise Government policy to aid the
resumption and encourage continued progress.

I speak for administrative efficiency, for lightened tax burdens, for
sound commercial practices, for adequate credit facilities, for
sympathetic concern for all agricultural problems, for the omission of
unnecessary interference of Government with business, for an end to
Government's experiment in business, and for more efficient business in
Government administration. With all of this must attend a mindfulness of
the human side of all activities, so that social, industrial, and
economic justice will be squared with the purposes of a righteous
people.

With the nation-wide induction of womanhood into our political life, we
may count upon her intuitions, her refinements, her intelligence, and
her influence to exalt the social order. We count upon her exercise of
the full privileges and the performance of the duties of citizenship to
speed the attainment of the highest state.