History

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  Hetch Hetchy: A History in Documents

  In 1913, President Woodrow Wilson signed legislation approving the construction of the O’Shaughnessy Dam to inundate the Hetch Hetchy Valley inside Yosemite National Park. This…

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  The Odyssey

  This new edition of Homer’s epic poem is designed with the needs of undergraduate students in mind. The selections, totalling almost half the full work,…

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  London Labour and the London Poor

  Produced between 1850 and 1862, London Labour and the London Poor is one of the most significant examples of nineteenth-century oral history. The collection teems…

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  Medicine and Healing in the Premodern West: A History in Documents

  Medicine and Healing in the Premodern West traces the history of medicine and medical practice from Ancient Egypt through to the end of the Middle…

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  The Great Irish Famine: A History in Documents

  In the fall of 1845, a mysterious blight ravaged Ireland’s potato harvest, beginning a prolonged period of starvation, suffering, and emigration that reduced the Irish…

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  Thomas Aquinas: Basic Philosophical Writing

  This volume contains new translations of the essential philosophical writings of Thomas Aquinas, from the Summa Theologiae and The Principles of Nature. The included texts…

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  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…

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  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…

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  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…

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  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)…

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  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…

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  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…

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  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.…

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  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…

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  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…

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  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,…

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  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…

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  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…

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  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…

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  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.…

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  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.…

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  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,…

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  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…

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  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…