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
The Prince
The Prince is a foundational political treatise by Niccolò Machiavelli, exploring the complexities of power and governance. Written i…
Democracy in America
When Tocqueville visited America in the 1830s he found a thriving democracy of a kind he had not seen anywhere else. Many of his insightful …
Catholic and Anti-Catholic History
Catholic and Anti-Catholic History presents a thought-provoking exploration of how historical narratives can be shaped into tools of propaga…
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…
Noted Speeches of Abraham Lincoln
A few of Lincoln's most famous speeches and the Lincoln-Douglas debate make for historic reading. (summary by David O)
From October to Brest-Litovsk
This account by Trotsky is of the events in Russia from the October Revolution of 1917 in Petrograd, to his signing of the Brest-Litovsk tre…
Letters of Travel
Three books of travel writing (between them covering the USA, Canada, Japan and Egypt) by the Nobel Prize winning author of the Just So Stor…
An Inquiry into the Human Mind
An Inquiry into the Human Mind by Thomas Reid is a foundational text in the philosophy of perception, challenging the prevailing views of hi…
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…
Radioactive Substances
Marie Curie, born in Warsaw in 1867, was a Polish-French physicist and chemist famous for her work on radioactivity. She was a pioneer in th…
Totem and Taboo
Totem and Taboo: Resemblances Between the Mental Lives of Savages and Neurotics is a book by Sigmund Freud published in German in 1913 under…
Anti-imperialist Writings
Anti-imperialist Writings presents a thought-provoking collection of Mark Twain's reflections on imperialism, drawn from his diverse body of…
Stickeen
A great dog story, a well told tale--the naturalist and adventurer John Muir recounts how he and his companion, a dog named Stickeen, each, …
Public Opinion
Public Opinion by Walter Lippmann offers a profound exploration of the dynamics that shape public perception and its impact on democracy. Wr…
Insomnia Collection
Soporific dullness is in the ear of the listener, and what's tedium incarnate to one person will be another person's passion and delight. Ho…
Institutes of the Christian Religion
Institutes of the Christian Religion is John Calvin's seminal work on Protestant systematic theology. Highly influential in the Western worl…
The Art of Travel
The Art of Travel is a handbook of practical advice for the adventure seeking Victorian. We hear how to organize all steps of a voyage, from…
On Liberty
"On Liberty," a seminal work by philosopher John Stuart Mill. Mill felt there were no definite standards for defining what societ…
The Problems of Philosophy
This 1912 book remains among the most widely-used and well-written introductions to philosophy in English. It was aimed to be an accessible …
The Subjection of Women
The Subjection of Women is the title of an essay written by John Stuart Mill in 1869, possibly jointly with his wife Harriet Taylor Mill, st…