Political Science
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience (Version 3)
Read by Phil Chenevert
Henry David Thoreau
"That government is best which governs least" is the famous opening line of this essay. The slavery crisis inflamed New England i…
Ambassador Morgenthau's Story
Read by Margaret Espaillat
Henry Morgenthau
Ambassador Morgenthau’s memoirs of his years in the service of the United States in Constantinople, (today Istanbul), are an important prima…
The Polity of the Athenians and the Lacedaemonians (Spartans)
Read by Phil Chenevert
Xenophon
The Polity of the Lacedaemonians talks about the laws and institutions created by Lycurgus, which train and develop Spartan citizens from bi…
Twenty Years at Hull House
Read by LibriVox Volunteers
Jane Addams
Jane Addams was the first American woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In a long, complex career, she was a pioneer settlement worker…
Offences Against One's Self: Paederasty
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Jeremy Bentham
Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) was an English jurist, philosopher, and legal and social reformer. He was a political radical and a leading theor…
The Westminster Alice
Read by Ruth Golding
Saki
Published five years before John Kendrick Bangs had the same idea with Alice in Blunderland, Saki, in his 1902 series of satirical articles,…
Meditations from the Pen of Mrs. Maria W. Stewart
Read by James K. White
Maria W. Stewart
Maria W. Stewart was America's first black woman political writer. Between 1831 and 1833, she gave four speeches on the topics of slavery a…
Areopagitica (Version 2)
Read by Thomas A. Copeland
John Milton
The noblest and most extensive defense of freedom of the press in English. Although Milton was sufficiently practical to serve as a censor o…
The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice
Read by Sean Michael Hogan
Stephen Leacock
This lengthy political essay by noted Canadian humourist Stephen Leacock was written while he was professor of political economy at McGill U…
The Free Press
Read by Sean McClain
Hilaire Belloc
I propose to discuss in what follows the evil of the great modern Capitalist Press, its function in vitiating and misinforming opinion and i…
Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius, Book 1
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Niccolò Machiavelli
In "Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius", posthumous work by the author of The Prince, Machiavelli discusses the useful…
From Dictatorship to Democracy (version 2)
Read by Benjamin Gittins
Gene Sharp
From Dictatorship to Democracy, A Conceptual Framework for Liberation is a book-length essay on the generic problem of how to destroy a dict…
Roman History: The Early Empire, from the Assassination of Julius Caesar to tha…
Read by Pamela Nagami
William Wolfe Capes
William Wolfe Capes (1834-1914) was an Anglican cleric, a classicist, and a historian. This is his short chronicle of the early Roman Empire…
Philosophical Rudiments Concerning Government and Society
Read by Jeffrey Church
Thomas Hobbes
De Cive ("On the citizen") is one of Thomas Hobbes's major works. "The book was published originally in Latin from Paris in 1…
There Are Realistic Alternatives
Read by Benjamin Gittins
Gene Sharp
Violence in society and politics, whether in the form of war, terrorism, dictatorship, oppression, usurpation, or genocide, is widely recogn…
Voltaire and the French Enlightenment
Read by Pamela Nagami
Will Durant
In this Little Blue Book Number 512, Will Durant describes François-Marie Arouet, the writer, historian, and philosopher known as Vol…
The Life-Story of a Russian Exile
Read by Expatriate
Marie Sukloff
Hero or assassin? Victim or criminal? Marie Sukloff fits no easy category. A young peasant woman who became a political radical and activ…
The Masque of Anarchy
Read by Phil Benson
Percy Bysshe Shelley
The Masque of Anarchy was Shelley's response to the Peterloo massacre at St Peter's Fields, Manchester, where 18 died and hundreds were inju…
Wellington
Read by Pamela Nagami
George Hooper
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, (1769-1852), was born in Dublin, the younger son of an Irish Protestant aristocrat. He served with…
Six Months In Mexico
Read by James K. White
Nellie Bly
This is an account of Nellie Bly's travels through Mexico in 1885. The book was originally a series of individual articles that she submitte…