John Ciardi was born in Boston in 1916. The child if immigrant parents, he attended college in an era when college education was still considered a privilege rather than an expected part of American life. College was the path to a better career, and a path toward making something of the person so that they could give back to society. For Ciardi, he was able to use his college education

Seized" Max Hardberger Max Hardberger's Seized is a thrilling adventure novel, told from real-life events, of Hardberger's life as a sea captain, teacher, ship recapture, pilot, and family man. The novel, though biographical, does embellish certain events that took place in order to make the novel more appealing to readers. In a foreword by Hardberger himself, he says that it is his duty as a writer to give true facts,

Socrates and Confucius Socrates died 2,400 years ago. To be more specific, he was put to death, a criminal destined on a capital allegation. How gravely Athens took her philosophers! It plugs the contemporary intellectual by way of resentment more than fear that one may well die for such a reason (1). Of Confucius, it was, on one occasion, asked: "Is he the one who knows that what he does is in