Browse books about history and civilization, from broad historical accounts to focused studies of people and events. This collection currently contains 30 titles in Literra’s catalogue.
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Julius Caesar's Commentaries on the Gallic War present his campaigns in Gaul as a year-by-year account of military movement, diplomacy, rebellion, logistics, engineering, and battle. Caesar writes in the third person, presenting himself not as a memoirist but almost as an objective reporter
A period account of piracy that mixes biography, crime, adventure and maritime history, useful as a source for how piracy was narrated in its era
H. G. Wells attempts a broad world history that is especially interesting as a twentieth-century effort to connect civilizations, science and large-scale historical change
Volume 3 of John Lord’s Beacon Lights of History presents a series of historical biographies and sketches designed to make the past understandable through important personalities. Lord’s method is to organize history around “beacon lights”—figures whose lives illuminate wider political
Bunch Grass is a Western novel built around life in the American frontier, where the physical landscape shapes the economic and social choices available to the characters. The title refers to the grasses of open country, immediately placing the reader in a region where ranching, land, weather
Jacob Abbott’s biography-style history presents Cleopatra within the political world of Ptolemaic Egypt and the Roman power struggle around it
Confession de Minuit is a modern French psychological novel built around memory, confession, and the difficult task of understanding a life from the inside. Georges Duhamel was deeply interested in the ordinary human emotions that are easy to hide behind routine, and a “midnight confession”
Volume 3 of Cassius Dio’s Roman History continues his account of the Roman Empire through a period of severe political instability, including the reigns and struggles associated with Septimius Severus, Caracalla, Macrinus, Elagabalus, and Alexander Severus. Dio writes as a senator and
William J. Long’s English Literature is a broad survey of English writing presented as a history of how literature developed alongside the life of the English-speaking world
English Poets of the Eighteenth Century surveys a period when English poetry was balancing classical ideals of order and reason with growing interest in emotion, nature, individuality, and imagination. Ernest Bernbaum introduces major poets and places their work within the literary culture that
Gutta-Percha Willie follows a boy whose adventurous independence and energetic curiosity lead him away from the restrictions of ordinary childhood. George MacDonald often uses children’s fiction to explore imagination, freedom, kindness, and moral growth, allowing young protagonists to learn
Thucydides examines conflict, alliances, strategy, political speeches and the consequences of war in a sustained historical narrative
Tom Jones is a good-hearted but impulsive young man whose uncertain birth and romantic adventures carry him through a comic journey across eighteenth-century English society. Raised by the benevolent Squire Allworthy, Tom grows up alongside the cold and calculating Blifil, who eventually
Holland is a travel and cultural portrait of the Netherlands, examining its landscapes, cities, institutions, customs, history, and people through the eyes of a foreign visitor. The book treats geography and society together
Making the House a Home is a collection of domestic reflections centered on family, affection, hospitality, sacrifice, and the ordinary acts that turn a building into a place of belonging. Edgar Guest was known for accessible poetry and writing about everyday life, and the book treats domestic
Livy’s Roman History, Books I–III takes the reader back to Rome’s legendary beginnings and follows the early republic through wars, political struggles, social conflict, and the formation of Roman institutions. The earliest books mix history with traditions and legendary stories because Livy
The Century Vocabulary Builder is a practical language book designed to expand vocabulary by showing how words are connected through roots, meanings, usage, and the historical development of English. Instead of treating vocabulary as a list to memorize mechanically, it encourages the reader to
The Father of British Canada is a historical portrait centered on Sir John A. Macdonald, one of the principal architects of Canadian Confederation and the country's first prime minister
Volume 5 of The Great Events by Famous Historians covers the medieval period from Charlemagne through the era of Frederick Barbarossa, presenting major political, military, religious, and dynastic events as readable historical episodes. The volume emphasizes turning points and prominent
Volume 8 of The Great Events by Famous Historians focuses on the later Renaissance and Reformation, a period when Europe’s intellectual, religious, political, and cultural structures were changing rapidly. The collection presents major events through individual episodes: the spread of new
The History of a Crime is Victor Hugo’s political history of the coup d’état carried out by Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte in France in December 1851. Hugo writes as a fierce opponent of the seizure of power and presents the event through the testimony of people who witnessed it and the broader
Jane Austen's youthful mock-history compresses English monarchs and major events into a deliberately comic, opinionated parody rather than a conventional historical textbook
Volume 8 of this multi-volume History of England carries the national story into another stage of political and social development, presenting events through the broad narrative framework of a continuous history from the Roman invasion to the modern era. Like the other volumes, it treats
The History of Insects is a broad natural-history introduction to one of the most diverse groups of living things on Earth. Rather than treating insects merely as pests or curiosities, the book examines their forms, habits, development, and relationships with the wider natural world
Book IV, usually associated with the “Revolution” of Rome, turns from conquest toward the breakdown of the republican system itself. The central problem is that Rome has become too powerful and socially unequal for the old political structures to function as they once did
Book V examines Rome’s transition from Republic to military monarchy, focusing on the accumulation of power around individual commanders and the final transformation of constitutional government. Mommsen treats Caesar and Augustus not simply as unusually talented men but as products of a system
The Monk is one of the great explosions of the Gothic novel: religion, forbidden desire, violence, the supernatural, imprisonment, corruption, and terror all collide around Ambrosio, a celebrated monk whose reputation for purity begins to collapse under temptation. At the start, Ambrosio
A translation and study of the Babylonian creation epic, offering a window into Mesopotamian mythology and ancient cosmological thought
Turkish Prisoners in Egypt is a report by delegates of the International Committee of the Red Cross documenting the condition of prisoners of war held in Egypt during the First World War. Unlike a conventional war narrative, the focus is on people who have been captured and on the practical
Under King Constantine is a historical romance set against a period of political conflict and social change, using the experiences of individual characters to make a larger national history personal. Katrina Trask’s historical fiction is interested in the emotional cost of public events
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