History

Showing 1–24 of 87 results

  • Black Slavery in the Maritimes: A History in Documents

    Many thousands of black people were enslaved in the Maritimes, Quebec, and Upper Canada between the seventeenth and early nineteenth centuries. It is not surprising…

  • Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Fundamental Political Writings

    This classroom edition includes On the Social Contract, the Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts, the Discourse on the Origins of Inequality, and the…

  • Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave

    Published in the bicentenary year of Frederick Douglass’s birth and in a Black Lives Matter era, this edition of Narrative of the Life of Frederick…

  • Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson

    Essayist, lecturer, poet, and America’s first “public intellectual,” Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) is the central figure in nineteenth-century American letters and the leader (albeit reluctantly)…

  • The Melting-Pot

    Israel Zangwill, an Anglo-Jewish author and son of immigrants, wrote The Melting-Pot to demonstrate how immigrants could become good American citizens, hoping to forestall the…

  • The Stamp Act of 1765: A History in Documents

    When Parliament sought to raise funds through the passing of the Stamp Act in 1765, they did not anticipate the protests and staunch opposition to…

  • Coryats Crudities: Selections

    The early seventeenth-century traveler Thomas Coryate’s five-month tour of Western Europe culminated in Coryats Crudities, one of the strangest travelogues published in early modern England.…

  • Civil Disobedience

    In 1848, Henry David Thoreau twice delivered lectures in Concord, Massachusetts, on “the relationship of the individual to the state.” The essay now known as…

  • A Plea for Emigration; or Notes of Canada West

    Mary Ann Shadd’s pamphlet A Plea for Emigration; or Notes of Canada West is, as the title promises, a settler guide designed to inform prospective…

  • Utilitarianism – Ed. Bailey

    Utilitarianism is a classic work of ethical theory, arguably the most persuasive and comprehensible presentation of this widely influential position. While he didn’t invent utilitarianism,…

  • The Trial of Charles I: A History in Documents

    In January 1649, after years of civil war, King Charles I stood trial in a specially convened English court on charges of treason, murder, and…

  • Civilization and Its Discontents

    In Civilization and Its Discontents Freud extends and clarifies his analysis of religion; analyzes human unhappiness in contemporary civilization; ratifies the critical importance of the…

  • On Perpetual Peace

    Kant’s landmark essay “On Perpetual Peace” is as timely, relevant, and inspiring today as when it was first written over 200 years ago. In it…

  • Jack of Newbury

    Jack of Newbury is an incisive yet remarkably entertaining work of narrative prose—and one that was extremely popular when it was published in the 1590s.…

  • The Second Treatise of Civil Government

    In this, the second of his Two Treatises of Government, John Locke examines humankind’s transition from its original state of nature to a civil society.…

  • Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, an African

    A contemporary critic described Ignatius Sancho as “what is very uncommon for men of his complexion, A man of letters.” A London shopkeeper, former butler,…

  • On Liberty – Ed. Kahn

    In this work, Mill reflects on the struggle between liberty and authority and defends the view that “the only purpose for which power can be…

  • The Female American – Second Edition

    When it first appeared in 1767, this novel was called a “sort of second Robinson Crusoe; full of wonders.” Indeed, The Female American is an…

  • A Child of the Jago

    “Learn to read and write, learn all you can, learn cunning, spare nobody and stop at nothing. … Do your devilmost … for the Jago’s…

  • A Letter Concerning Toleration

    Locke argued that religious belief ought to be compatible with reason, that no king, prince or magistrate rules legitimately without the consent of the people,…

  • Essays and Treatises on Philosophical Subjects

    This is the first edition in over a century to present David Hume’s Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Dissertation on the Passions, Enquiry Concerning the Principles…

  • Meditations on First Philosophy

    Considered a foundational text in modern philosophy, the Meditations on First Philosophy presents numerous powerful arguments that to this day influence debates in epistemology, the…

  • The Tragedy of Tragedies

    Best known today for the novels Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones, Henry Fielding was just as renowned in his own time as a prolific and…

  • Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark

    “The art of travelling is only a branch of the art of thinking,” Mary Wollstonecraft wrote in one of her many reviews of works of…