September Classic of the Month: A School History of the United States

With classes back in session, Cosimo is excited to present A School History of the United States by John Bach McMaster as its Classic of the Month.A School History of the United States, first published in 1897, became a definitive textbook. It possessed simple language, straightforward ideas, and easy organization. All its attributes make it browsable and concisely informative.

From the discovery of the New World by Europeans to the war with Spain at the turn of the 20th century, it still serves as a quick and useful introduction to the formation of the United States. Handy historical maps abound, and useful appendices include the complete Declaration of Independence as well as the Constitution of the United States as it stood at the beginning of the 20th century. 

A School History of the United States is of great interest to American history buffs, students of the history of education, librarians, and teachers.

A School History of the United States is available in paperback at leading online bookstores, including Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

About the Author:
John Bach McMaster was an American historian.

After growing up in Brooklyn, NY, John went to college at the City of New York, where he graduated in 1872. After graduation, he worked as a civil engineer in 1873-1877, was an instructor in civil engineering at Princeton University in 1877-1883, and in 1883 became professor of American history in the University of Pennsylvania.

He is best known for his History of the People of the United States from the Revolution to the Civil War (1883 sqq.), a valuable supplement to the more purely political writings of James Schouler, Von Holst and Henry Adams. He began working on it in 1873, having collected material since 1870. His A School History of the United States (1897) was an extremely popular textbook for many years. Besides these books and numerous magazine articles, he wrote Life of Benjamin Franklin in the “Men of Letters” series (Boston, 1887).

September Book of the Month: Democracy and Education

In celebration of the new school year, Cosimo is excited to present Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education by John Dewey as its Book of the Month.

John Dewey was one of the most influential figures in the education movement of the early 20th
century. This 1916 volume presents his profoundly revolutionary ideas about how best to teach young minds to be vigorous citizens of a truly democratic society. Reconciling classic philosophies of Rousseau and Plato with the needs and demands of the modern world, Dewey emphasizes critical thinking, problem solving, and learning through practical applications of complex concepts. His efforts were with one goal in mind: to create an integrated, holistic approach to the educational process.

Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education is available in ebook and paperback at leading online bookstores, including Amazon (paperback).


About the Author:

John Dewey was an American philosopher, psychologist and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. Dewey, along with Charles Sanders Peirce and William James, is recognized as one of the founders of the philosophy of pragmatism and of functional psychology. He was a major representative of the progressive and progressive populist philosophies of schooling during the first half of the 20th century in the USA.

Although Dewey is known best for his publications concerning education, he also wrote about many other topics, including experience, nature, art, logic, inquiry, democracy, and ethics.

MUFON Symposium Featuring Cosimo Author Stanton Friedman

The MUFON Symposium was first founded in 1970 to discuss the latest UFO developments and MUFON’s vision for the future. This event will bring together MUFON's own field investigators with UFO researchers, enthusiasts, and experts from around the world, including none other than our very own author, Stanton Friedman.

Friedman will be holding a lecture entitled: "Making Ufology Respectable" on Sunday, September 27th.

The symposium will focus on expanding ufology by opening new doors in academia, industry and the media.
The Symposium will be held at the Hotel Irvine in Irvine, CA from September 24 - 27. Pricing for various packages including single events, day passes, ticketed events, or all weekend passes are now available for both MUFON members and non-members. For more information about accommodations, pricing, events, and speakers, please visit the MUFON site or the event page.

Stanton T. Friedman is a nuclear physicist who has worked for General Electric, General Motors, Westinghouse, and other corporations. He is the author of  Crash at Corona  and wrote introductions to The Roswell Report: Case Closed and The Roswell Report: Fact versus Fiction. He has appeared on Larry King, Unsolved Mysteries, and Nightline, and was involved with the documentaries UFOs Are Real and Flying Saucers Are Real. He was the final speaker at the fiftieth anniversary conference at the International UFO Museum and Research Center at Roswell, and has given more than 700 lectures on the subject of UFOs.

September Organization of the Month: Transitions

Cosimo is excited to announce Transitions (TOL) as our Organization of the Month for September.

Transitions is a nonprofit organization established to strengthen the professionalism, independence and impact of the news media in the post-communist countries of Europe and the former Soviet Union.

Based in Prague, the organization does this through a combination of journalism and media training programs, blogs, and the publication of Transitions Online magazine.

The first book to be published by the Transitions imprint was Classroom Struggles: Education Reporting and Analysis from Transitions. Classroom Struggles is a collection of news and feature articles written by young journalists in Eastern Europe, the Balkans, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Russia. The articles expose the political and socio-cultural roadblocks education faces in those regions. As tensions between Ukraine and Russia have been rising over the last year, this collection is a compelling source for understanding the role of education in that region. It offers a information and discussion for readers interested in these regions, political scientists, and journalists. Classroom Struggles is available for purchase at leading online bookstores around the world including Barnes & Noble and Amazon.


About Transitions
TOL was established in April 1999, after the final issue of its print predecessor, Transitions Magazine, was published. Four of the former print magazine’s staff members established Transitions Online as a means of keeping the widely respected, cross-border coverage of the magazine alive.

Cosimo B2B 
Cosimo B2B is Cosimo's services unit, that offers publishing services to organizations such as TOL and others, who would like to present books to a worldwide readership and enhance their brand name. We welcome those organizations and institutions that are aligned with Cosimo's mission of creating a smarter and more sustainable society by connecting people with valuable ideas. If your organization wants to know more about the benefits of publishing with us or having its own imprint set up by us, please visit our private imprint page.

September Series of the Month: The Five Foot Shelf of Classics

Our bookshelves are overflowing with the fantastic range of titles in our September Series of the Month, The Five Foot Shelf of Classics, collected by Charles William Eliot.

Originally published between 1909 and 1917 under the name "Harvard Classics," this stupendous 51-volume set (a collection of the greatest writings from literature, philosophy, history, and mythology) was assembled by American academic Charles William Eliot (1834-1926), Harvard University's longest-serving president. Also known as "Dr. Eliot's Five Foot Shelf," it represented Eliot's belief that a basic liberal education could be gleaned by reading from an anthology of works that could fit on five feet of bookshelf.

Eliot compiled these titles to serve as a "home educator" -- for people who couldn't attend Harvard so they too could get a literary education with some of the best and most well-known classics around the world. 

Eliot’s collection was even featured in the memoir: What the Great Books Taught Me About Life, Death, and Pretty Much Everything Else, in which author Christopher Beha details how he turned to these great works for comfort and inspiration during a time of personal struggle. Beha’s memoir illustrates what Eliot believed about The Five Foot Shelf: that the great works of literature are still worth consulting, as a source not just of education, but of edification in every sense of the word.

Cosimo offers this series by individual volume at leading online bookstores or as a full set in hardcover or paperback, especially of interest to historians, collectors, who like to expand their personal library, professional librarians, or for parents wanting their high school kids to learn more before going off to college. Actually it is a must for those of you who want to know the fundamentals of literature, philosophy and history without being muddled by a multitude of platitudes in social media, gaming and neverending TV shows. If you are interested in purchasing the full set, please contact us.

The collection includes titles such as:

• The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

• The Complete Poems of John Milton

• Ben-Hur

• The Origin of Species

• Don Quixote,

• The Odyssey

• Beowulf

• Aeneid, and many more

The paperback retail list price for this series is: $1209.49, but now our price is: $969.99 (you save $239.50 or a 20 percent discount)

The hardcover retail list price for this series is: $1784.49, but now our price is: $1429.99 (you save $354.5 or a 20 percent discount)

UFO Documentary "Travis" from Cosimo Author Peter Robbins

UFO researcher, investigator, and author Peter Robbins has been appearing all over news and media outlets recently due to the upcoming documentary he helped work on in honor of the upcoming 40th anniversary of an alien abduction on November 5, 1975.

“Travis” is a 90 minute documentary film recounting the now-world famous 1975 UFO abduction of TravisWalton and the impact it has had on his life over the intervening forty years - and on the lives of others who were also involved.

Watch the chilling trailer below:

“Travis” premiered in February at the 2015 International UFO Congress Film Festival in Scottsdale Arizona where it swept the ‘EBE’ Awards for best long documentary film and the People’s Choice Award. For more information on "Travis," check out an interview with Executive Producer Jennifer Stein and Ron James, founder of Ivovle TV or visit the Onwinges Productions website.

There will also be a conference commemorating the Travis Walton UFO incident from November 5 - 8. For schedules and tickets please visit the 2015 Skyfire UFO Summit website.

About the Author
Peter Robbins is one of the most respected and best-known investigative writers on the serious study of UFOs. He's been involved with extraterrestrial phenomena for more than thirty years as a researcher, investigator, writer, lecturer, activist, consultant, author, and conference organizer. Peter is a regular fixture on radio shows around the country and in the United Kingdom. He is also co-host of the monthly program "Encounters" on GRA Network Radio. He is often a guest on and consultant to numerous television shows and documentaries. Robbins' articles, essays, commentaries, and columns have appeared online and in numerous print publications. He is a popular lecturer at colleges, universities, and conferences both here and abroad 

Peter Robbins is the co-author of the British bestseller Left At East Gate: A First Hand Account of the Rendlesham Forest UFO Incident, Its Cover-up and Investigation. Cosimo is proud to present this title in both paperback and hardcover.

Celebrating Women's Equality Day

Tomorrow, August 26th is the anniversary of national woman suffrage. Women in the United States were granted the right to vote on August 26, 1920, when the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution was certified as law. We at Cosimo are celebrating by reading up on women's history and learning more about suffrage and voting rights with these titles:

The Subjection of Women by John Stuart Mill

Mill puts forth the radical notion, one still unaccepted among many to this, that women are not inherently inferior to men but that male dominance has molded a certain kind of behavior in them, and calls for the full equality of women not only before the law but in cultural and social reality as well. Written in 1861, not published till 1869, and still not fully heeded in the early 21st century, this is must-reading for anyone striving to understand the biases and inequities of Western culture.




A Short History of Women's Rights by Eugene A. Hecker
The fight for women's rights, particularly with regards to the right to vote, made such enormous strides between 1910, when the first edition of the book was published, and 1914, when its second edition was released with an update on the effort, that within the space of those few brief years, it became almost a historical document, not a rundown of current affairs. But that second edition-of which this is a replica-remains an important document for understanding the struggle of women in the early 20th century. Its survey of older history is still significant, exploring the surprisingly liberated state of women in ancient Roman, the inferiority of women under Christian doctrine, and the condition of women's person-hood in more recently English and American eras.

A Vindication of the Rights of Women by Mary Wollstonecraft
One of the earliest works of protofeminist thought, this startling prescient 1792 book is the first published argument advocating for the societal elevation of women as the intellectual and emotional equals of men. Well received in its day and still an important resource for anyone wishing to understand the history of feminism, this extended essay demolishes the sexual double standard of the day, offers a rational defense for the education of girls, and demands merely that women be treated as people.

August Series of the Month: An Arabic-English Lexicon

"This marvelous work in its fullness and richness, its deep research, correctness and simplicity of arrangement far transcends the Lexicon of any language ever presented to the world."
--Dr. G.P. Badger

This August, Cosimo is excited to present An Arabic-English Lexicon as it's Series of the Month.

Compiled over many years in the 1800s by Edward William Lane, An Arabic-English Lexicon is a massive Arabic-English dictionary based on several medieval Arabic dictionaries, mainly the Taj al-'Arus, or "Crown of the Bride" by al-Zabidi, also written in the 19th century. The Lexicon was supposed to have consisted of two "books", Book I, the dictionary and Book II was to contain rare words and explanations. Volumes I to V, part of Book I were completed by Edward Lane,  but after he died, his great-nephew, Stanley Lane-Poole finished volumes VI to VIII. Book II was never started. Presented here in eight volumes, this work is one of the most concise and comprehensive Arabic-English dictionaries to date. Volume I includes a Preface by the author, a Postscript to the Preface, and Book I of the dictionary, which includes the first through the fourth letters of the Arabic alphabet.  Cosimo offers this educational series by individual volume at various online bookstores or as a full set in hardcover or paperback. This series is especially of interest to collectors of Middle-Eastern classics, readers who like to expand their personal library or professional librarians. If you are interested in purchasing the full set, please contact us. The hardcover retail list price for the series is $399.92, but now our price is $319.99  (you save $79.93 or a 20 percent discount). The paperback retail list price is $142.92, but now our price is $114.92 (you save $28 or a 20 percent discount).

About the Author:

EDWARD WILLIAM LANE (1801-1876) was a British translator, lexicographer, and Orientalist. Instead of studying at college as a young man, Lane moved to London with his brother to study engraving, at which time he also began to study Arabic. When his health began failing, he moved to Egypt for a change of atmosphere and to continue his studies. While in Egypt, Lane began to study ancient Egypt, but soon became more entranced by modern customs and society. He relied on Egyptian men to help him gather information, especially on the topic of Egyptian women, on which he wrote many books. Lane also translated One Thousand and One Nights, though his greatest work remains The Arabic-English Lexicon. Born in 1854 in London, England, STANLEY LANE-POOLE was a British historian, orientalist, and archaeologist. Lane-Poole worked in the British Museum from 1874 to 1892, thereafter researching Egyptian archaeology in Egypt. From 1897 to 1904 he was a professor of Arabic studies at Dublin University. Before his death in 1931, Lane-Poole authored dozens of books, including the first book of the Arabic-English Lexicon started by his uncle, E.W. Lane.

August Classic of the Month: A Vindication of the Rights of Women

In the spirit of Women's Equality Day on August 26th, Cosimo is thrilled to present A Vinidication of the Rights of Women by Mary Wollstonecraft as its Series of the Month.

This 1792 book is one of the earliest works of protofeminist thought and is the first published

argument advocating for the societal elevation of women as the intellectual and emotional equals of men. Written during the time of the French Revolution, this revolutionary book reacts against the French Diplomat's , Charles Maurice's, statement that women should be educated only in domestic matters.

Well received in its day and still an important resource for anyone wishing to understand the history of feminism, this extended essay demolishes the sexual double standard of the day, offers a rational defense for the education of girls, and demands merely that women be treated as people.

A Vindication of the Rights of Women is available in hardcover and paperback at leading online bookstores, including Amazon and Barnes & Noble. 

About the Author:
Mary Wollstonecraft  was an eighteenth-century British writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights. During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book. Wollstonecraft is best known for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), in which she argues that women are not naturally inferior to men, but appear to be only because they lack education. She suggests that both men and women should be treated as rational beings and imagines a social order founded on reason. 

Happy Birthday To Cosimo Author Robert G. Ingersoll!

American freethinker and author Robert Green Ingersoll was born on this day in 1833!

Ingersoll was a notorious radical whose uncompromising views on religion and slavery (they were bad, in his opinion), women's suffrage (a good idea, he believed), and other contentious matters of his era made him a wildly popular orator and critic of 19th-century American culture and public life. 

In celebration of this great politician, veteran, and lawyer's birthday, Cosimo has highlighted some of his greatest works:



Some Mistakes of Moses
First published in 1879, this audaciously titled volume is a collection of short essays challenging the concept of biblical inerrancy. Focusing on the first five books of the Bible, once popularly believed to have been written by Moses, Ingersoll highlights the savageries, absurdities, injustices, and scientific inaccuracies of the writings considered noble and true by so many. As enjoyable a read as it is a provocative one, this is the lost classic of a true American original.

Great Speeches of Col. R. G. Ingersoll

Considered in their day some of the finest gems of oratory, these lectures by Ingersoll feature some of his most entertaining and most insightful yet lesser known talks, including: "Eulogy on Abraham Lincoln," "Grand Future of America," "Best Portion of the Earth," "Getting Up Early in the Morning," "The Fashions and Handsome Women," "What the Railroads Have Done," "How a Man Should Treat His Wife and Children" and many more. 

Abraham Lincoln

Ingersoll published this lecture in 1894, a stirring tribute to the honesty, courage, and genius of a beloved leader at a time when his life and works were still within living memory. Focusing in particular on Lincoln's abhorrence of slavery and his work to defeat it as a national institution, Ingersoll offers readers today an invaluable perspective on the great President from the era immediately after his own, when his legend was being cemented in the American imagination.

The Gods and Other Lectures

As a speaker dedicated to expanding intellectual horizons and celebrating the value of skepticism, Ingersoll spoke frequently on such topics as atheism, freedom from the pressures of conformity, and the lives of philosophers who espoused such concepts. This collection of his most famous speeches includes the lectures: "The Gods" (1872), "Humboldt" (1869), "Thomas Paine" (1870), "Individuality" (1873), and "Heretics and Heresies" (1874).

Cosimo is also happy to offer a both a paperback and hardcover edition of the 12 volume series The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll. Happy birthday to this wonderful author!

August Book of the Month: Fanack Water Files on How to Solve Jordan's Water Scarcity

With many places around the world experiencing another summer of drought, Cosimo brings to you our Book of the Month, Fanack Water Files: Water Challenges and Solutions in Jordan with a Special Report on the Red Sea-Dead Sea Project by Fanack, an independent organization focused on the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

According to the U.N., over 3 billion people around the world face water scarcity and this will be one of the critical problems of the twenty-first century. Water scarcity causes not only humanitarian or environmental problems, but could result in conflicts between nations. A recent U.S. National Intelligence Strategy stated that the U.S. considers water scarcity as serious a threat as weapons of mass destruction, terrorism and cyber attacks. The Middle East is not immune to this growing water scarcity, due to its harsh climate and desertification, poor water management and lack of sharing of information among the regional countries.

Considering the crucial nature of water, Fanack has now issued the first in a series of Fanack Water Files dealing with the MENA region. In this publication, it displays the state of the water supply in Jordan, a country of strategic importance to the region due to its location in the Syrian desert and bordering Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Israel. Jordan’s growing water scarcity is caused by increased demand due to rapid population growth and the over-exploration of water resources in recent decades. The limited water supply is one of the main obstacles to Jordan’s development. This first report addresses possible solutions, such as rainwater harvesting, treated waste water, seawater desalination in the Red Sea and water transfers between the Red Sea and Dead Sea.

In times of global upheaval, growing world population, and increasing evidence of climate change, this report will enlighten  policy-makers planning their next policies, business people looking for opportunities and academics looking for concise information on the state of water in Jordan. In essence, it is a report of importance to all stakeholders in a more peaceful and prosperous future in this region and the world.

Fanack Water Files: Water Challenges and Solutions in Jordan with a Special Report on the Red Sea-Dead Sea Project is available in ebook and paperback at leading online bookstores, including Amazon (paperback, Kindle) and Barnes & Noble.

About the Author: 
Fanack is an independent organization that aims to provide facts about and analysis of the MENA region and its history, society, economy, and culture. Its primary target group is Arab youth, who are exploring their roots and developing their identity in relation to both the Eastern and Western world. Fanack also wants to inform general audience readers that seek a better understanding of the region, including policy-makers, business people, academics, students, and tourists. Visit fanack.com and water.fanack.com.

See also recent press release

July Series of the Month: A History of the American People

"Washington felt very keenly the sharp power of the hot criticism to which his course towards France had subjected him. It was a heady current to stem. Unmeasured abuse beat upon him. He seemed for a little the leader of a party, and of a minority party at that, instead of the leader of the nation. He was made to seem for a time nothing but a Federalist, the head of a party which meant to make the federal government the people’s master and then use its mastery to serve England, whom they hated, and to humiliate France, whom they loved."
                 —from Chapter III: “A Nation in the Making”


Cosimo is continuing our celebrating of American history with our July Series of the Month "A History of the American People" by Woodrow Wilson.

This collection is comprised of a five-volume history of the United States and the American people, reflecting many of Wilson's policies and ideas that he later brought to his candidacy and presidency. Our series is a beautiful replica of the 1902 first edition featuring all the original halftone illustrations.




About the author: 

Before he served as the 28th President of the United States, from 1913 to 1921, before he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1919, Thomas Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) was a lawyer and an academic: a university professor of history and politics, and president of Princeton University. It was during his tenure at Princeton that he penned this five-volume history of the United States, and it reflects many of the biases he later brought to national politics, from racial prejudice to anti-immigration attitudes. In Volume III, Wilson delves into the expansion of the United States in the early 19th century in the western frontiers, tells the story of the founding and development of the federal government in the first quarter century of its existence, and explores contentious tariff matters and other divisive issues that challenged the new nation in its early years. Appendices feature the full text of the 1783 Treaty of Peace with England, the 1787 ordinance for the government of the Northwest Territory, the 1787 Constitution of the United States, the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 and 1799, and the Virginia Resolutions of 1798.

Cosimo offers Wilson's impressive series by individual volume at various online bookstores or as a full set in hardcover or paperback, especially of interest to collectors, readers who like to expand their personal library or professional librarians. If you are interested in purchasing the full set, please contact us.

The hardcover retail list price for the series is $154.95, but now:our price: $119.99  (you save $35 or a 22 percent discount)The paperback retail list price: $64.95, but now: our price: $49.99 (you save $15 or a 23 percent discount) including free shipping.

July Classic of the Month: The Constitution of the United States and Other Historical American Documents

As we are celebrating Fourth of July this month, Cosimo likes to present in honor of our country's independence, as our July Classic of the Month: The Constitution of the United States and Other Historical American Documents. 

Included in our Classic of the Month is The Declaration of Independence, The Articles of Confederation, The Constitution, and The Constitution of the Confederate States, created after the attempt to secede from the Union (especially relevant with the controversial flag discussions that have been in the news recently). Together, these four documents offer a firsthand perspective on the political history of the United States.

Celebrate our founding month with the paperback, hardcover or ebook version in your hands!

Nominations for EthicMark Awards are now open!

Founded in 2004 by Cosimo author Hazel Henderson and supported by Ethical Markets Media, The EthicMark Awards are once again upon us. The rewards recognize socially responsible advertising and media communications that uplift the human spirit and society. This year marks the 10th anniversary of the awards!

Award-winning companies are examined by all-encompassing standards for
- the value of their message,
- the product or service being advertised
- and the merits and reputation of the company itself

There is still time to nominate a deserving company -- the submission deadline for 2015 is July 17. 

For more information, please go to www.ethicmark.org.

About the Author:

Hazel Henderson is a world-renowned futurist, evolutionary economist, and consultant on sustainable development. She has written books and introductions for Cosimo, including: "Uncivil Liberties: Deconstructing Libertarianism," "Earth Fever: Living Consciously with Climate Change," "Dare to Care: A Love-Based Foundation for Money and Finance," and "The Power of Yin, Celebrating Female Consciousness."

Abominable Snowman in the Media

The BBC recently published an article titled "Is the Himalayan Yeti a Real Animal?" asking if there is any truth behind the reports of a Yeti,  also known as the Abominable Snowman.

The article discusses the mythical descriptions and morals behind the folklore, as well as accounts of those who have seen the Yeti. There are also several scientific studies identified and researchers named, but true evidence is still hard to come by.

Cosimo is proud to offer "Abominable Snowmen - Legend Come to Life" by Loren Coleman in both hardcover and paperback for those interested in learning more about this elusive creature. Check out all of our Cosimo titles for even more information on the fascinating topic of cryptozoology.