The Athenian Constitution is the sole surviving account of 158 constitutions of the Greek states by Aristotle. It chronicles the development of democratic government in the city-state Athens from the reforms of Solon through the reforms of Cleisthenes. Athens' system of government lasted for more than 500 years, longer than any modern democracy...

Aristotle's Rhetoric discusses the methods of persuasion, argument, style, and organization for writing a good speech...

Physical Treatises is a collection of writings by Aristotle that includes On the Heavens, Meteorology, Physics, and On Generation and Corruption. ..

This title is from the Hayes Barton Press "Originals" series, a collection of classic fiction and nonfiction works from world literature published in the VitalBook format. Look for new titles soon, as we expand to include more works from both Western and Eastern cultures. Available exclusively from the VitalSource Store...

This title is from the Hayes Barton Press "Originals" series, a collection of classic fiction and nonfiction works from world literature published in the VitalBook format. Look for new titles soon, as we expand to include more works from both Western and Eastern cultures. Available exclusively from the VitalSource Store...

Emma is a Jane Austen novel upon which several movies are based. Believing herself to be extremely clever, Emma sets out to help Harriet Smith, a plain, but malleable girl, make a good match. As a result, a series of comical misunderstandings occur...

In this essay, originally titled "Resistance to Civil Government" (1849), Thoreau argues for the right to refuse to pay taxes as an act of protest when government policy offends an individual's conscience. In 1845, Thoreau was briefly imprisoned for refusing to pay taxes as a protest against the Mexican War and slavery...

This title is from the Hayes Barton Press "Originals" series, a collection of classic fiction and nonfiction works from world literature published in the VitalBook format. Look for new titles soon, as we expand to include more works from both Western and Eastern cultures. Available exclusively from the VitalSource Store...

Persuasion, Jane Austen's last novel, is about the relationship between Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth. The tone in this work is slightly more serious than it is in her other novels...

It is chiefly as one of the most brilliant and original of recent writers on political philosophy that Bagehot is known, but he holds also a distinct place as a critic of literature. He did not write criticism like a professional man of letters, and his production in this field is at times less fine in workmanship than that of some men of much less ability. But, in compensation, he was free from the tendency to the use of a technical literary dialect and to the excessive self-consciousness in style which mars so much modern work in this department. He wrote as a man of affairs with a vigorous mind and a gift of picturesque speech, a robust taste and a genuine love of letters. He always had something definite to say, and no one can read his discussion of such a man as Milton without feeling braced and stimulated by contact with an intellect of uncommon strength and incisiveness. - C. W. Eliot..

Published in 1818, Northanger Abbey is a comedy by Jane Austen about Catherine Morland's entry into society and the various faux pas she makes. Austen used this novel to ridicule the Gothic novels that were popular during the period...

None of Bacon's writings gives in short space so vivid a picture of his tastes and aspirations as this fragment of the plan of an ideal commonwealth. The generosity and enlightenment, the dignity and splendor, the piety and public spirit, of the inhabitants of Bensalem represent the ideal qualities which Bacon the statesman desired rather than hoped to see characteristic of his own country; and in Solomon's House we have Bacon the scientist indulging without restriction his prophetic vision of the future of human knowledge. - C. W. Eliot..

Leo Tolstoy is considered one of the greatest authors of the nineteenth century. Some of his masterpieces include War and Peace, Anna Karenina, and The Death of Ivan Ilyich. Ivan the Fool, written in 1886, is one of Tolstoy’s well-known short stories. It is the tale of four siblings and their encounter with the Old Devil...

This title is from the Hayes Barton Press "Originals" series, a collection of classic fiction and nonfiction works from world literature published in the VitalBook format. Look for new titles soon, as we expand to include more works from both Western and Eastern cultures. Available exclusively from the VitalSource Store...

Francis Bacon, who at the height of his career was appointed head of the Court of Chancery, wrote several essays analyzing public and private life, as well as the behavior of individuals. Essays, Civil and Moral, is a collection of fifty-eight of these works...

This classic tale by Leo Tolstoy tells the tragic story of Anna, a married woman who falls in love with a wealthy army officer, and of Konstantin Levin, a landowner who tries to find spiritual fulfillment through hard work and marriage. Through them and the other characters that surround them, Tolstoy created a beautiful representation of imperial Russian society. ..