Serapis: 289 books

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is the first novel of Irish writer James Joyce. In a modernist style, it traces the intellectual and religio-philosophical awakening of young Stephen Dedalus, a fictional alter ego of Joyce and an allusion to Daedalus, the consummate craftsman of Greek mythology....

Notoriously and self-confessedly intemperate, Boswell shared with Johnson a huge appetite for life and threw equal energy into recording its every aspect in minute but telling detail. This irrepressible Scotsman was 'always studying human nature and making experiments', and the marvelously vivacious...

When the soul of a man inclines toward the dreamy, he musn't be kept away from it, he musn't have it rationed. If you keep your mind off it, your mind will never know what's in it. And you'll be the plaything of all sorts of appearances, because you'll never have managed to understand the nature of...

Mark Twain found himself adrift as a tenderfoot in the Wild West—and Roughing It is his hilarious record of his travels come to life with his inimitable mixture of reporting, social satire, and rollicking tall tales. Twain's humorous account of his six years in Nevada, San Francisco, and the Sandwich...

A classic narrative of St. Augustine’s life, written by the Church Father himself. Great to read for personal enjoyment or to learn more about St. Augustine and the Early Church. St. Augustine wrote his Confessions, which include both his faults before God and his praises to God, for others to read...

AMONG the strange mysterious beings, with which the eighteenth century was so richly dowered, no one has commanded more universal comment and attention than the mystic who was known by the name of the Comte de St. Germain. A hero of romance; a charlatan; a swindler and an adventurer; rich and varied...

Confessions of an English Opium-Eater is an autobiographical account written by Thomas De Quincey, about his laudanum (opium and alcohol) addiction and its effect on his life. The Confessions was "the first major work De Quincey published and the one which won him fame almost overnight..."...

I have lived much that I have not written, but I have written nothing that I have not lived, and the story of this book is but a plaintive refrain wrung from the over-burdened song of my life; while the tides of feeling, winding down the lines, had their sources in as many broken upheavals of my own...

THE RICH, ACTIVELY FULFILLED LIFE of the French prophet, Michel de Nostradame, is the story of genius not only in its rarest but its most modern form. His ability foreshadowed a hope, now gaining a first hearing in this our day, that science may, in some not too remote tomorrow, discover principles...

No American historian of the nineteenth century has so enchanted, irritated, and impressed his contemporaries and successors as Henry Brooks Adams. He was and is his country's greatest historian, and its most elusive. His achievement was various: he helped to fashion and define the school of "scientific"...

A retelling of the lives of black slaves of the south through the eyes of one born a slave during the pre-civil war years in America. Harriet tells not only her own story, but countless others, and at the time it was written, it fanned the abolitionist fires that started a war.

Often regarded as one of the greatest military strategists in history, Hannibal would later be considered one of the greatest generals of antiquity, together with Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Scipio, and Pyrrhus of Epirus. Plutarch states that, when questioned by Scipio as to who was the greatest...

The Borgia family became prominent during the Renaissance in Italy. They were from Valencia, the name coming from the family fief of Borja, then in the kingdom of Aragon, in Spain. The Borgias became prominent in ecclesiastical and political affairs. Especially during the reign of Alexander VI, they were suspected of many crimes, including adultery, simony, theft, bribery and murder.

Charles I was monarch of the three kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his execution in 1649. After his succession, Charles quarrelled with the Parliament of England, which sought to curb his royal prerogative. Charles fought the armies of the English and Scottish parliaments...