Browse works on politics, public life, institutions, power, civic questions, and the ideas that influence society. This collection currently contains 34 titles in Literra’s catalogue.
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A Century Too Soon is historical fiction built around the turbulent period of early American history, using imagined characters to place readers inside a world where political ideals, colonial loyalties, violence, and the struggle for independence collide. Rather than presenting the past as a
A Child's Anti-Slavery Book was created to introduce young readers to the reality of American slavery and to cultivate opposition to the institution through stories, descriptions, and appeals aimed at the emotions as much as the intellect. Rather than discussing slavery only as a political
This volume collects presidential messages, papers, proclamations, and related official documents from the United States, turning the words of presidents into a primary-source record of government in action. Instead of presenting political history through a later historian's narrative, the
A Political Diary, 1828–1830 records political life through contemporary observations rather than through a polished later history. Edward Law captures conversations, personalities, parliamentary developments, social encounters, and the shifting concerns of British political society during a
Mary Wollstonecraft argues that women should receive serious education and be treated as rational moral agents rather than being confined to decorative or dependent social roles
John Fiske places American political institutions inside a much longer history of human government, asking how ideas about liberty, representation, federalism, and political authority developed and why they took a particular form in the United States. Instead of treating the American political
Paine combines political argument and accessible rhetoric in a pamphlet about independence, legitimacy and the case for a break with British rule
Count the Cost is a political pamphlet addressed to the people of Connecticut during a debate over constitutional change. Written under the pseudonym Jonathan Steadfast, it argues that citizens should examine the practical consequences of political proposals before accepting them
W. E. B. Du Bois combines essays, autobiographical writing, and poetry to examine Black life, racial identity, citizenship, work, inequality, and the social legacy of segregation
Tocqueville’s large study examines democratic society, civic life, associations, equality and the habits that make political institutions function—or fail to
Tocqueville’s first volume analyzes American political and social institutions, equality, local government, civic life, and the relationship between democracy and freedom
The second volume shifts toward the social and cultural effects of equality, examining individualism, associations, ideas, manners, intellectual life, and democratic society
Experiments in Government and the Essentials of the Constitution examines American government through the practical problems of constitutional design, political institutions, administration, and reform. Elihu Root writes as a statesman and lawyer interested in how formal structures work when
Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first inaugural address was delivered in March 1933 at the depth of the Great Depression
Bill Clinton’s first inaugural address presents the beginning of a new administration through themes of change, responsibility, renewal, and national unity. Clinton speaks to a country entering a new political era and argues that government must adapt to economic and social transformation
Open Source Democracy takes the culture of the internet and asks a provocative political question: what happens when the habits of open-source software—sharing, modifying, collaborating, distributing information, and building things together—are applied to democratic life? Douglas Rushkoff
Sustained Honor is a historical story designed to make the past feel immediate through individual choices rather than a dry sequence of dates. John Roy Musick was interested in American history as lived experience, especially moments when ordinary people are forced to decide whether they will
The Anti-Slavery Harp is a collection of songs written and gathered in the context of the nineteenth-century American abolitionist movement. Its purpose is direct: use music to make the moral reality of slavery emotionally difficult to ignore
This brief study of the United States Constitution traces the document back to the political problems that produced it, explaining why the framers thought a new national structure was necessary and how they designed its institutions. The Constitution did not appear from nowhere
The Constitutional History of England from 1760 to 1860 traces the political development of Britain through a century in which monarchy, Parliament, political parties, reform movements, and public opinion were all changing. Charles Duke Yonge is interested in institutions rather than
Walter Bagehot analyzes the working institutions of the British constitution, especially the relationships among Parliament, the cabinet, the monarchy, and public opinion
The European Anarchy examines the long historical development of international conflict through the problem of competing national powers without an effective central authority. G
A series of arguments for the proposed U.S. Constitution, useful for studying institutional design, faction, representation and the reasoning behind constitutional structure
W. E. B. Du Bois surveys the history and contemporary condition of Black people, emphasizing the African past, slavery, colonialism, economic forces, and racial injustice
The Peace Negotiations is a first-person account of the diplomatic work surrounding the attempt to end a major war. Instead of presenting conflict primarily through battles, the book moves the reader into the rooms where governments, diplomats, advisers, and negotiators argue over borders
Bertrand Russell offers a Western philosopher's analysis of China, its political institutions, culture, social structure, and relationship with the major powers of the early twentieth century
Thomas Paine responds to Edmund Burke by defending natural rights and representative government and arguing from the principles of the French Revolution against hereditary political privilege
The Soul of Democracy is Edward Howard Griggs’s attempt to interpret the First World War through a larger argument about democracy and human liberty. Written in the atmosphere of wartime crisis, the book asks what democratic government actually means when nations claim to be fighting for freedom
Du Bois combines history, sociology, memoir, and cultural commentary to examine Black life in the United States after emancipation, including race, education, labor, citizenship, and double consciousness
John Stuart Mill argues that legal and social restrictions placed on women are unjust and also prevent society from benefiting fully from individual liberty and ability
The Wits and Beaux of Society is a collection of biographical sketches centered on the fashionable, literary, and socially prominent figures of eighteenth-century Britain. Grace Wharton writes about a world where intelligence, wit, beauty, manners, money, scandal, and social connections could
Turkey: A Past and a Future examines the history and political possibilities of the Ottoman Turkish state from the perspective of a period when its future appeared deeply uncertain. The work looks backward to the empire’s development and institutions while considering the pressures of
The founding U.S. declaration explains why the colonies claimed independence, setting out a theory of rights and government and listing grievances against George III
What’s Wrong with the World is G. K
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