I stumbled on a very interesting Amazon list by a woman who looks to have lots of interesting Amazon lists. This one is called “Best Project Gutenberg History” and is what it sounds like: a list of books available gratis on Project Gutenberg (not all of which are currently available on Amazon as well).

As more and more free resources are available online, it seems an increasingly useful service is just the compiling of useful lists of those resources.

Here’s her list sans links:

1. The Histories by Herodotus
2. The History of the Peloponnesian War: Revised Edition by Thucydides
3. Xenophon, III, Anabasis by Xenophon
4. The Jugurthine War / The Conspiracy of Catiline by Sallust
5. Livy: The Early History of Rome, Books I-V by Titus Livy
6. The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius
7. History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire [8 Volumes Complete Book Set]
8. History of the Wars: Books 1-2 by Procopius
9. The Secret History by Procopius
10. A Short History of Monks and Monasteries by Alfred Wesley Wishart
11. Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres by Henry Adams, Ralph Adams Cram
12. Manners, Custom And Dress During The Middle Ages And During The Renaissance Period by Paul Lacroix
13. A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe
14. The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy by Jacob Burckhardt
15. The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry by Walter Pater
16. The Age of Reformation by Preserved Smith
17. History of the Conquest of Mexico by W.H. Prescott
18. History Of The Conquest Of Peru by William Hickling Prescott
19. History of England, Volume 5 by David Hume
20. The Ancien Regime by Charles Kingsley
21. The French Revolution: A History by Thomas Carlyle
22. Reflections on the Revolution in France by Edmund Burke
23. The Life of Napoleon I, Including New Materials from the British Official Records: Volume 1 by John Holland Rose
24. The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton
25. The History of England by Thomas Babington Macaulay
26. The Condition of the Working Class in England by Friedrich Engels
27. The Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant by Ulysses, S. Grant
28. Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World: From Marathon to Waterloo by Edward Shepherd Creasy
29. The development of the European nations, 1870-1900 by John Holland Rose
30. The People of the Abyss by Jack London
31. The Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie and The Gospel of Wealth by Andrew Carnegie
32. The Beards’ Basic History Of The United States by Charles A. and Mary R. Beard
33. History of the World War: An Authentic Narrative of the World’s Greatest War by Francis A. with Richard J. Beamish Marsh
34. Ten days that Shook the World by John Reed
35. The Second World War by Winston S. Churchill
36. United States Presidents’ Inaugural Speeches by United States Presidents

I posted this a couple years ago:

Saturday, December 24, 2005 Christmas reading list Let’s put the X back in Xmas! from lowercase liberty putting the “chi” back in chiMas from lowercase liberty The Economics of Santa’s Workshop from Mises.org Scrooge Defended from Mises.org And the Christmas viewing list grows longer and longer but must always include some historical context. I make my reservations explicit in “Let’s put the X back in Xmas!” but I still consider the History Channel’s Christmas Unwrapped to be the seasonal must-see. posted by bkmarcus on Saturday, December 24, 2005 (permalink)

And now, to put my HTML where my mouth is, I’ve created a “Christmas Unwrapped” page to let you see the movie on YouTube:

Christmas Unwrapped: The History of Christmas Part 1 of 5 (~ 10 min) Part 2 of 5 (~ 10 min) Part 3 of 5 (~ 10 min) Part 4 of 5 (~ 10 min) Part 5 of 5 (~  5 min) History Channel Product Page Classroom Questions