Short Nonfiction Collection, Vol. 091

“Pneumatic tubes, instead of store wagons, will deliver packages and bundles.” Store purchases by tube was one of John Watkins Jr’s predictions for What May Happen in the Next Hundred Years, written in 1900. Man and womankind’s achievements, and their failures, are central to many of the reader chosen nonfiction pieces in vol. 091 (Racial Geography, Airmail Pilots, The Skeleton in the Closet, On Noise, Progressive Party Platform, Impeachment of President Andrew Johnson, Haroun Al-Raschid, Plea for Atheism, Cry of the Children, Address to Medical Students, The Brotherhood of the Kingdom, Fallacy of Success, and Carranza’s Tragic Flight). Broadening the gaze are selections on science, poetry, myth, art, and imaginative writing (Evolution of the Stars, Solar Myths, Landscape Painting, Robert Burns, and Algeron Blackwood). Summary by Sue Anderson