Modern Classics
Classic texts, retold in contemporary English
The Decameron
Giovanni Boccaccio (1353)
Dialogues
Plato (399–347 BC)
The Prince
Niccolò Machiavelli (1532)
Candide, or Optimism
Voltaire (1759)
Meditations
Marcus Aurelius (c. 170–180 AD)
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions
Edwin A. Abbott (1884)
Common Sense
Thomas Paine (1776)
The Federalist Papers
Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay (1787–1788)
Democracy in America
Alexis de Tocqueville (1835/1840)
Democracy in America (From the French)
Alexis de Tocqueville (1835/1840)
Progress and Poverty
Henry George (1879)
The Wealth of Nations
Adam Smith (1776)
An Essay on the Principle of Population
Thomas Malthus (1798)
Philosophical Works
René Descartes (1637–1644)
Commentaries on the Gallic War
Julius Caesar (c. 50 BC)
On the Origin of Species
Charles Darwin (1859)
The Histories
Herodotus (c. 430 BC)
History of the Peloponnesian War
Thucydides (c. 431 BC)
Two Treatises of Government
John Locke (1689)