How people organise themselves and argue about it, and how they actually live — money and law, the mind and the family, power and its critics, alongside the cooking, games, journeys and household arts of ordinary life. Free, beautifully formatted editions throughout.
Society
EconomicsRicardo, Malthus, Keynes and Veblen; Bagehot on the money market and Brandeis on the bankers.Law & CriminologyHammurabi and Justinian, Grotius and Holmes; the trials, the prisons and the police.PsychologyFreud on dreams, James on habit, Jung on the unconscious — and the crowds, memories and emotions they set out to explain.SociologyDurkheim’s heirs and Chicago’s founders; Riis and Jack London in the slums, Ida B. Wells with the figures.Politics & GovernmentThe Federalist and the Manifesto, Burke and Bakunin, Tammany Hall and Mother Jones.Business & ManagementDefoe and Taylor, Barnum and the Gilbreths, the drummer on the road and the department store.Gender & Sexuality StudiesWollstonecraft and Fuller, the Pankhursts and the anti-suffragists, Herland and The Well of Loneliness.Parenthood & FamilyMrs Beeton and Montessori, Beecher and Charlotte Mason, Roosevelt writing home to his children.
Everyday Life
Cooking & FoodEscoffier and Eliza Acton, Mrs Beeton and Amelia Simmons, the first American cookbook and the first cocktail guide.Sports & HobbiesWalton and Capablanca, Vardon and Bill Tilden, H. G. Wells inventing the wargame on his drawing-room floor.Travel & ExplorationCook and Shackleton, Isabella Bird and Mary Kingsley, Twain in Europe and Thoreau in the Maine woods.Nature & the OutdoorsMuir on Yosemite and Alaska, Jekyll in the garden, Fabre’s rivals in the field, and the last of the passenger pigeons.Health & MedicineNightingale on nursing, Osler on the history of medicine, Schweitzer at Lambaréné, and the paper that named Parkinson’s disease.Education & TeachingMontessori’s method, Dewey’s schools of to-morrow, Nietzsche on the universities, and the McGuffey readers.Travels in EuropeBorrow among the Gypsies, Stevenson’s Inland Voyage, E. V. Lucas in Venice and Bayard Taylor on foot — the grand tour and its successors.Travels in Asia & the Middle EastIsabella Bird in Japan, Kinglake’s Eothen, Kawaguchi and Sarat Chandra Das in Tibet — the road to Lhasa and beyond.Travels in the AmericasRoosevelt in the Brazilian wilderness, Stevenson’s Silverado, Lafcadio Hearn in the West Indies and Frederick Starr in Mexico — the New World observed.Exploration & Polar VoyagesCook and Shackleton, Scott’s last expedition, Frémont in the Rockies and Lady Brassey’s Sunbeam — the ends of the earth.Travels in AfricaBurton and Barth, Amelia Edwards up the Nile, Timbuctoo and the Highlands of Ethiopia — the Nile, the Sahara and the Horn.