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An international bestseller that sold more than 300,000 copies when it first appeared in 1852, Uncle Tom’s Cabin was dismissed by some as abolitionist propaganda; yet Tolstoy deemed it a great work of literature ‘flowing from love of God and man.’

Today, however, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s stirring indictment of slavery if often confused with garish dramatizations that flourished for decades after the Civil War: productions that relied heavily on melodramatic simplifications of character totally alien to the original. Thus ‘Uncle Tom’ has become a pejorative term for a subservient black, whereas Uncle Tom in the book is a man who, under the most inhumane of circumstances, never loses his human dignity.

‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin is the most powerful and most enduring work of art ever written about American slavery,’ said Alfred Kazin.

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Whether we love or hate Sigmund Freud, we all have to admit that he revolutionized the way we think about ourselves. Much of this revolution can be traced to The Interpretation of Dreams, the turn-of-the-century tour de force that outlined his theory of unconscious forces in the context of dream analysis. Introducing the id, the superego, and their problem child, the ego, Freud advanced scientific understanding of the mind immeasurably by exposing motivations normally invisible to our consciousness. While there’s no question that his own biases and neuroses influenced his observations, the details are less important than the paradigm shift as a whole. After Freud, our interior lives became richer and vastly more mysterious.

These mysteries clearly bothered him–he went to great (often absurd) lengths to explain dream imagery in terms of childhood sexual trauma, a component of his theory jettisoned mid-century, though now popular among recovered-memory therapists. His dispassionate analyses of his own dreams are excellent studies for cognitive scientists wishing to learn how to sacrifice their vanities for the cause of learning. Freud said of the work contained in The Interpretation of Dreams, “Insight such as this falls to one’s lot but once in a lifetime.” One would have to feel quite fortunate to shake the world even once. –Rob Lightner

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‘All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn,’ Ernest Hemingway wrote. ‘It’s the best book we’ve had.’ A complex masterpiece that has spawned volumes of scholarly exegesis and interpretative theories, it is at heart a compelling adventure story. Huck, in flight from his murderous father, and Nigger Jim, in flight from slavery, pilot their raft thrillingly through treacherous waters, surviving a crash with a steamboat, betrayal by rogues, and the final threat from the bourgeoisie. Informing all this is the presence of the River, described in palpable detail by Mark Twain, the former steamboat pilot, who transforms it into a richly metaphoric entity. Twain’s other great innovation was the language of the book itself, which is expressive in a completely original way. ‘The invention of this language, with all its implications, gave a new dimension to our literature,’ Robert Penn Warren noted. ‘It is a language capable of poetry.’A seminal work of American literature that still commands deep praise and elicits controversy, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is essential to the understanding of the American soul. The recent discovery of the first half of Twain’s manuscript, long thought to be lost, made front-page news. And this unprecedented edition, which contains for the first time omitted episodes and other variations present in the first half of the handwritten manuscript, as well as facsimile reproductions of thirty manuscript pages, is indispensable to a fuller understanding of the novel. The changes, deletions and additions made in the first half of the manuscript indicate that Mark Twain frequently checked his impulse to write an even darker, more confrontational book than the one he finally published.

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Perhaps the most readable and accessible of the great works of the scientific imagination, The Origin of Species sold out on the day it was published in 1859. Theologians quickly labeled Charles Darwin the most dangerous man in England, and, as the Saturday Review noted, the uproar over the book quickly ‘passed beyond the bounds of the study and lecture-room into the drawing-room and the public street.’ Yet after reading it, Darwin’s friend and colleague T. H. Huxley had a different reaction: ‘How extremely stupid not to have thought of that.’ Based largely on Darwin’s experience as a naturalist while on a five-year voyage aboard the H.M.S. Beagle, The Origin of Species set forth a theory of evolution and natural selection that challenged contemporary beliefs about divine providence and the immutability of species. A landmark contribution to philosophical and scientific thought, the book has fresh application today for its pioneering views on the ecology of plants and animals. This edition also includes an introductory historical sketch and a glossary Darwin later added to the original text.It’s hard to talk about The Origin of Species without making statements that seem overwrought and fulsome. But it’s true: this is indeed one of the most important and influential books ever written, and it is one of the very few groundbreaking works of science that is truly readable.

To a certain extent it suffers from the Hamlet problem–it’s full of clichés! Or what are now clichés, but which Darwin was the first to pen. Natural selection, variation, the struggle for existence, survival of the fittest: it’s all in here.

Darwin’s friend and “bulldog” T. H. Huxley said upon reading the Origin, “How extremely stupid of me not to have thought of that.” Alfred Russel Wallace had thought of the same theory of evolution Darwin did, but it was Darwin who gathered the mass of supporting evidence–on domestic animals and plants, on variability, on sexual selection, on dispersal–that swept most scientists before it. It’s hardly necessary to mention that the book is still controversial: Darwin’s remark in his conclusion that “Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history” is surely the pinnacle of British understatement. –Mary Ellen Curtin, Amazon.com

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Called a ‘perfect novel’ by Harold Bloom, Persuasion was written while Jane Austen was in failing health. She died soon after its completion, and it was published in an edition with Northanger Abbey in 1818.

In the novel, Anne Elliot, the heroine Austen called ‘almost too good for me,’ has let herself be persuaded not to marry Frederick Wentworth, a fine and attractive man without means. Eight years later, Captain Wentworth returns from the Napoleonic Wars with a triumphant naval career behind him, a substantial fortune to his name, and an eagerness to wed. Austen explores the complexities of human relationships as they change over time. ‘She is a prose Shakespeare,’ Thomas Macaulay wrote of Austen in 1842. ‘She has given us a multitude of characters, all, in a certain sense, commonplace. Yet they are all as perfectly discriminated from each other as if they were the most eccentric of human beings.’

Persuasion is the last work of one of the greatest of novelists, the end of a quiet career pursued in anonymity in rural England that produced novels which continue to give pleasure to millions of readers throughout the world.

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This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

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‘I am a person who would quit authorizing in a minute to go to piloting,’ Mark Twain once remarked. ‘I would rather sink a steamboat than eat, any time.’ And in 1882, Twain did just that: he returned to the river of his youth as a mature writer determined to expand seven articles which he had serialized in The Atlantic Monthly in 1875 into the definitive travelogue on the great Mississippi. Although Life on the Mississippi was not commercially successful when first published in May 1883, it is the work that Twain later claimed was the favorite among his books. Twain’s rich portrait of the Mississippi also marks a distinctive transition in the life of the nation, from the boom years preceding the Civil War to the sober times that followed. Yet it is infused with the irreverent humor that was his trademark. ‘Mark Twain was the first writer who ever used the American vernacular at the level of art,’ said Bernard de Voto. ‘He had a greater effect than any other writer on the evolution of American prose.’

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In the Laws, Plato describes in fascinating detail a comprehensive system of legislation in a small agricultural utopia he named Magnesia. His laws not only govern crime and punishment, but also form a code of conduct for all aspects of life in his ideal state – from education, sport and religion to sexual behaviour, marriage and drinking parties. Plato sets out a plan for the day-to-day rule of Magnesia, administered by citizens and elected officials, with supreme power held by a Council. Although Plato?s views that citizens should act in complete obedience to the law have been read as totalitarian, the Laws nonetheless constitutes a highly impressive programme for the reform of society and provides a crucial insight into the mind of one of Classical Greece?s foremost thinkers.

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Classic Book for the Kindle: Grimm’s Fairy Stories (Illustrated Version) by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm with black and white illustrations by John B. Gruelle

Grimm’s Fairy Story Collection contains the following classic stories:
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HANSEL AND GRETHEL
OH, IF I COULD BUT SHIVER!
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LITTLE SNOW WHITE
CATHERINE AND FREDERICK
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FAITHFUL JOHN
THE WATER OF LIFE
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THE SIX SWANS
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MOTHER HOLLE
THE FROG PRINCE
THE TRAVELS OF TOM THUMB
SNOW-WHITE AND ROSE-RED
THE THREE LITTLE MEN IN THE WOOD
RUMPELSTILTSKIN
LITTLE ONE-EYE, TWO-EYES AND THREE-EYES

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Suitable for nursing and healthcare students around the world. This title includes more resources, including: ‘Ross & Wilson Textbook’; ‘Ross & Wilson eBook’; ‘Ross & Wilson eResources’; 100 animations; 400 self assessment questions; crosswords, drag and drop, hangman and other test yourself games; and colouring in exercises.

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The Communist Manifesto (1848), Marx and Engels?s revolutionary summons to the working classes, is one of the most important and influential political theories ever formulated. After four years of collaboration the authors produced this incisive account of their idea of Communism, in which they envisage a society without classes, private property or a state. They argue that increasing exploitation of industrial workers will eventually lead to a revolution in which Capitalism is overthrown. This vision provided the theoretical basis of political systems in Russia, China, Cuba and Eastern Europe, affecting the lives of millions. The Communist Manifesto still remains a landmark text: a work that continues to influence and provoke debate on capitalism and class.

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