Fourteen stories, each followed by a poem on the theme of the story. 'As Easy as A. B. C.' is a strange tale of the future, A.D. 2065, when the planet is under the benevolent rule of an Aërial Board of Control. The disease of crowds and democracy has ceased, and a small outbreak of democratic agitation makes it necessary to deal with the American district of Illinois through aërial artillery of sound vibrations and withering rays of light. Stalky and Beetle reappear in the 'Honors of War' hazing a priggish cad who is converted from the error of his ways. 'Regulus' is a schoolboy comedy having to do with the teaching of Latin, the connection of classic learning and everyday boy life. There are three psychical stories. The phantom dog who haunts a man is the real dog "Harvey," owned by the woman he subconsciously loves. 'Swept and Garnished' is a grim war story, in which the ghosts of murdered children appear to a complacent German woman making it impossible for her to disbelieve comfortably. 'Mary Postgate' deals with the effect of resentment for the slaughter of the innocents in the European war on one woman in England. She has an unexpected opportunity to be judge and executioner. 'The Edge of the Evening' tells of an encounter with spies who descend from an aeroplane on the lawn of a country house just before dinner. There are stories of the British peasant in real possession of the land whether its nominal ownership is Roman or English. 'The Village that Voted the Earth was Flat' is a comic extravaganza, the revenge of a party of motorists upon the magistrate who fines them unjustly for speeding. One of the group is a producer of opera, one a member of parliament, one a journalist, and all are brilliantly equipped in different ways for the confounding of their enemy.
About the Author: Joseph Rudyard Kipling (30 December 1865 - 18 January 1936) was an English journalist, short-story writer, poet, and novelist. Kipling's works of fiction include The Jungle Book (1894), Kim (1901), and many short stories, including "The Man Who Would Be King" (1888). His poems include "Mandalay" (1890), "Gunga Din" (1890), "The Gods of the Copybook Headings" (1919), "The White Man's Burden" (1899), and "If-" (1910). He is regarded as a major innovator in the art of the short story; his children's books are classics of children's literature; and one critic described his work as exhibiting "a versatile and luminous narrative gift". Kipling was one of the most popular writers in the United Kingdom, in both prose and verse, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Henry James said: "Kipling strikes me personally as the most complete man of genius, as distinct from fine intelligence, that I have ever known." In 1907, at the age of 42, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, making him the first English-language writer to receive the prize, and its youngest recipient to date. He was also sounded out for the British Poet Laureateship and on several occasions for a knighthood, both of which he declined. Kipling's subsequent reputation has changed according to the political and social climate of the age and the resulting contrasting views about him continued for much of the 20th century. George Orwell called him a "prophet of British imperialism".[Literary critic Douglas Kerr wrote: "[Kipling] is still an author who can inspire passionate disagreement and his place in literary and cultural history is far from settled. But as the age of the European empires recedes, he is recognised as an incomparable, if controversial, interpreter of how empire was experienced. That, and an increasing recognition of his extraordinary narrative gifts, make him a force to be reckoned with."