History Books

Not history books in the textbook sense — this shelf is historical fiction, novels written about periods the author already considered the past by the time they picked up the pen. Charles Dickens set A Tale of Two Cities during the French Revolution, six decades before he wrote it. Leo Tolstoy did the same with Napoleon's invasion of Russia in War and Peace. Alexandre Dumas built The Count of Monte Cristo around the political upheaval of post-Napoleonic France. What makes these books work as history as much as fiction is the level of research underneath them — the historical detail is accurate enough that the fictional plot has real stakes layered on top of it.

Where to start

A Tale of Two Cities

The French Revolution through the eyes of two men who love the same woman — Dickens's tightest plot.

Where to start

The Count of Monte Cristo

A wrongly imprisoned man's decades-long revenge, set against post-Napoleonic France.

Where to start

War and Peace

Tolstoy's sprawling epic of Napoleon's invasion of Russia — long, but built to be read in pieces.

76 books total in this collection, free to read with synchronized LibriVox audio.

A Tale of Two Cities

Charles Dickens

History Books

A Tale of Two Cities

The Picture of Dorian Gray

The Scarlet Letter

War and Peace

Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience

Anne of Green Gables

The Count of Monte Cristo

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

The Jungle Book

Les Misérables

Ion

The Federalist Papers

Hans Brinker; Or, The Silver Skates

The Oregon Trail: Sketches of Prairie and Rocky-Mountain Life

Rose o' the River

Joe Wilson and His Mates

William the Conqueror

Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant — Volume 1

Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant — Volume 2

The Scouts of the Valley

Voyage of the Paper Canoe&#13; A Geographical Journey of 2500 Miles, from Quebec to the Gulf of Mexico, During the Years 1874-5

Tamburlaine the Great — Part 1

King Henry VI, Part 1

King Henry VI, Part 2

King Henry VI, Part 3

King Richard III

Titus Andronicus

King John

King Richard II

King Henry IV, Part 1

King Henry IV, Part 2

King Henry V

Julius Caesar

Antony and Cleopatra

Cymbeline

King Henry VIII

Notes on Life & Letters

The Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon

The Danish History, Books I-IX

Agesilaus

Anabasis

The Cavalry General

Hellenica

History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science

History of the Conquest of Peru

Reflections on the Decline of Science in England, and on Some of Its Causes

Captain Fracasse

Father Goriot

The Spirit of the Border: A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley

Hearts of Controversy

Cyrano de Bergerac

The three musketeers

Ten Years Later

Twenty years after

Betty Zane

Queen Victoria

Salammbo

The French Revolution: A History

History of the Conquest of Peru&#13; With a Preliminary View of the Civilization of the Incas

Russia in 1919

Twenty Years at Hull House; with Autobiographical Notes

The Ancien Régime

The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

Russia

The Country Doctor

The Chignecto Isthmus and Its First Settlers

A Guide to the Best Historical Novels and Tales

Historical Lectures and Essays

The Cloister and the Hearth

The Adventures of Captain Bonneville, U. S. A., in the Rocky Mountains and the Far West

Vendetta

The Talisman

Lady Baltimore

Letters on Literature

The Ruins; Or, Meditation on the Revolutions of Empires and the Law of Nature

The Natural History of Selborne

Voyage of the Paper Canoe A Geographical Journey of 2500 Miles, from Quebec to the Gulf of Mexico, During the Years 1874-5

History of the Conquest of Peru With a Preliminary View of the Civilization of the Incas