It is the mid-seventeenth century in Boston. Hester Prynne, dignified and silent, is led through prison doors to her public shaming by members of the Puritan town. Holding her illegitimate child to her breast, and bearing a bright scarlet letter “A” embroidered on her bodice, Hester must now struggle to create a new life for herself and her child within this censorious community. When her missing spouse reappears, reveals himself to her, and takes...

Oldtown Folks (1869) is a historical novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Although her career peaked with the publication of abolitionist novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), Stowe continued to work as a professional writer throughout her life. A tale of family, faith, and perseverance, Oldtown Folks displays her impressive imaginative range and admirable moral outlook while illuminating aspects of early American life that would otherwise be consigned to history....

Renowned steel magnate and philanthropist, Andrew Carnegie, immigrated to America from Scotland as a boy in 1848, and at the age of thirteen began his first job as a bobbin boy, earning $1.20 a week. By the 1870s, the successful entrepreneur had founded the Carnegie Steel Company, later U.S. Steel, which would eventually establish Carnegie as the second wealthiest man in history, after John D. Rockefeller. He published "The Gospel of Wealth" in 1889...

"The Common Law" is a classic work from the great Supreme Court Justice, Oliver Wendell Holmes. In The Common Law, Holmes examines many aspects of the common law giving great attention to the historical perspective and precedence and its influence on modern common law. In this work you will lengthy discussions on several areas of law including: liability, criminal law, torts, contracts, and successions. Extensively annotated, this edition of "The...

This unforgettable novel tells the story of Tom, a devoutly Christian slave who chooses not to escape bondage for fear of embarrassing his master. However, he is soon sold to a slave trader and sent down the Mississippi, where he must endure brutal treatment. This is a powerful tale of the extreme cruelties of slavery, as well as the price of loyalty and morality. When first published, it helped to solidify the anti-slavery sentiments of the North,...

"In The Pathfinder, Cooper resuscitated the figure of Natty Bumppo, returning the Leather-Stocking to the New York forest. The imagination that revived Natty from the grave was intent on the author's own return, not just to modes he had seemingly abandoned, but to a position of moral authority in a republic about which he was deeply worried. Although Cooper still believed in the democratic-republican creed of Jefferson and Jackson, he agreed with...