Eighteen short nonfiction works in the public domain, independently chosen by the readers. Topics include the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, blow-pipe weapons, Oriental china; impressions of America by Enrico Caruso, Oscar Wilde, and Charles W. Eliot; Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass; film directors Ernst Lubitsch and King Vidor; architect Louis Sullivan; Roe vs. Wade, women's rights; microphobia, the Boy Scouts, Kentucky's blue-grass region, and wintry weather. (Summary by Sue Anderson)