Barnes Noble: 2826 books

This engaging collection of twelve essays by the incomparable Walter Bagehot was affectionately compiled by his lifelong friend Richard Holt Hutton. Included are “Letters on the Coup d’Etat of 1851,” “Bad Lawyers or Good?,” "The Metasphysical Basis of Toleration," "On the Emotion of Conviction," and “The Ignorance of Man,” among others.

Culled from Wilson’s campaign speeches, The New Freedom sets forth his policies promoting antitrust modification, tariff revision, and reforms in banking and currency. Wilson hoped his ideas would help restore America’s political and national life to “its purity, its self-respect, and its pristine strength and freedom.”

This edition includes a modern introduction and a list of suggested further reading.   There are few indictments of the American banking system as searing as Other People’s Money and How the Bankers Use It, written by Louis D. Brandeis in 1913. Long considered one of the major muckraking...

"If you have not consciously made the decision to be rich, excellent, and healthy then you have unconsciously made the decision to be poor, mediocre and unhealthy." – Wallace D. Wattles   Attaining wealth is as certain as math once you learn the practical steps outlined...

In all of his writings, Upton Sinclair attempted to establish what is known about life and truth beyond cliche and self-deception. In this 1922 work of nonfiction, an early entry into the self-help genre, Sinclair advises his modern readers on the best ways to improve their bodies and minds so as to cultivate health, wisdom, and happiness.

Sinclair edited this 1915 anthology of the literature of social protest.  Included are essays, stories, plays, and poems by such writers as Sinclair himself, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Zola, Kipling, Whitman, Shaw, Chesterton, Masefield, Galsworthy, London, Norris, Carlyle, Wilde, and many more.

This is the text of a debate between T. A. McNeal, a Kansas newspaper editor and author of When Kansas Was Young (1922), and Upton Sinclair, the famous novelist and crusading reformer. Sinclair was pro-Socialist, as he ran twice in California on the party’s ticket. T. A., on the other hand, was more conservative—a debate well worth reading!

Committed to improving social conditions for the poor, author and clergyman Charles Kingsley worked tirelessly on behalf of the needy, including teaching the importance of proper hygiene during a cholera epidemic in London. His work influenced his writing, as evidenced in this engrossing novel about how poor sanitary conditions and public apathy cause an outbreak of cholera.

In his introduction to this 1865 volume, the author indicates his method by writing that "civilization, being a process of long and complex growth, can only be understood when studied through its entire range."  His thesis is that all cultures—both in the present and long ago—have to be studied...

Though best known as a writer of thrilling pulp fiction, the creator of Fu Manchu also hobnobbed with the mystics and seekers of his time. In this 1914 history of the occult, his only nonfiction book, Rohmer introduces the reader to his passion for magic—telling the tales of Nostradamus; Cagliostro; and Elizabeth I’s court magician, Dr. John Dee.

This panoramic 1887 study argues that a nation’s mythology evolves from more “primitive” forms—which is why certain aspects of mythology are irrational. This second volume explores the gods of Australia and the South Seas, Native American and Mexican myths, Egyptian mythology, the gods of the Aryans of India, Greek divine myths, and romantic and heroic myths.

This 1883 novel about the struggle between labor and industry focuses on the 1877 railway strike. Its plot comes down squarely in favor of the latter—causing a sensation upon its anonymous publication. Many names were advanced as possible authors, but circumstantial evidence, as well as handwriting analysis, conclusively pointed to Hay, who until his death steadfastly denied authorship. 

“The twentieth century’s greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale” – Stephen King about H. P. Lovecraft   H. P. Lovecraft’s fiction reveals a universe that is vaster, darker, and stranger than anything previously imagined. His “cosmic horror” reflects a peculiarly...

Robert Smith Surtees was a dedicated sportsman who portrayed (and satirized) English fox-hunting society with great verve in his humorous novels. Published in 1847, Hawbuck Grange follows the adventures of Thomas Scott, Esq., an avid sportsman. The novel includes one of Surtees’s most memorable passages: an exhilarating account of a hare hunt.