Essays & Short Works
- Philosophical Travelogues
- Essays on Society and Culture
- Essays for Personal Growth
- Explorations in Science and Thought
- Explorations in Psychology
- Political Essays and Reflections
- Political Essays and Manifestos
- Philosophical Essays on Existence
Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One’s Reason and of Seeking Truth
The Discourse on Method is best known as the source of the famous quotation “cogito ergo sum”, “I think, therefore I am.” …. It is a method …
Ways of Wood Folk
Late nineteenth-century naturalist William J. Long invites us in to the secret worlds of the woodland animals. Containing Long's own animal …
The Art of Divine Contentment
"The Art of Divine Contentment" is an exposition by the Puritan minister Thomas Watson of the text found in Philippians 4:11: &quo…
What I Saw in America
In What I Saw in America, G. K. Chesterton offers a unique perspective on the American landscape, culture, and spirit through a series of in…
The Age of Reason
The Age of Reason; Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology is a pamphlet, written by a British and American revolutionary Thoma…
The Profits of Religion
"The Profits of Religion: An Essay in Economic Interpretation" is a non-fiction book, first published in 1917, by the American nov…
A Modest Proposal
Jonathan Swift almost defines satire in this biting and brutal pamphlet in which he suggests that poor (Catholic) Irish families should fatt…
A Holy Life the Beauty of Christianity
Written in the late 1600s by John Bunyan, author of The Pilgrim's Progress, this treatise exhorts Christians to holy living. Bunyan takes as…
A Discourse Upon the Origin and the Foundation of the Inequality Among Mankind
This work presents Rousseau's belief in the profoundly transformational effects of the development of civilization on human nature, which Ro…
Letters of Pliny
The largest surviving body of Pliny's work is his Epistulae (Letters), a series of personal missives directed to his friends, associates and…
Walking
This was originally a lecture given by Thoreau in 1851 at the Concord lyceum titled "The Wild" . He revised it before his death an…
My Inventions and Other Works
Between February and October 1919, Nikola Tesla submitted many articles to the magazine Electrical Experimenter. The most famous of these wo…
What's Wrong With the World
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936) has been called the “prince of paradox.” Time magazine observed of his writing style: “Whenever possibl…
Ten Days in a Madhouse
In 1887 Nellie Bly, one of the first female newspaper writers, and a young reporter who would soon go on to make a career for herself as an …
Poor Richard's Almanack
A brief biographical sketch of Franklin's life, followed by a collection (published in 1899) of 670 aphorisms, apothegms, or proverbs - shor…
The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism
This book records Bertrand Russell's impressions of the new regime after a 1920 visit to Russia following the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, inc…
Beyond Good and Evil
By turns illuminating, infuriating, bewildering, and amusing, Nietzsche's masterwork covers a lot of ground. He rejects most strands of Wes…
The Golden Bough
The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion is a wide-ranging comparative study of mythology and religion, written by Scottish anthropol…
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience
Civil Disobedience (Resistance to Civil Government) is an essay by American transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau that was first published i…
Utilitarianism
In Utilitarianism, John Stuart Mill presents a thorough examination of the ethical theory that advocates for actions that promote the greate…