Nonfiction Classics: Free EPUB Editions

Forty-two books on the site are nonfiction, which is more than a third of the catalogue and a surprise to readers who think of it as a fiction library. The range is the reason: philosophy, political theory, science, travel, memoir, military manual and social reportage.

The list doubles as a history of the essay-length book: Sun Tzu’s thirteen chapters, Plato’s dialogues, Machiavelli’s handbook, Darwin’s voyage, Thoreau’s year at the pond, Du Bois’s fourteen essays on race in America.

Because the rule uses a metadata field rather than a shelf, the list crosses the site’s own categories: a book can sit here and on the philosophy or memoir shelf at the same time. Nothing is double-counted in the site totals, which count titles, not placements.

Every nonfiction title on this shelf

Forty-two titles, oldest first, from the Art of War to 1922.

Year	Title	Author	Form	Words	Reading time
c. 500 BC	The Art of War	Sun Tzu	Treatise	54,841	3 h
c. 399 BC	Apology	Plato	Dialogue	19,000	1 h
c. 385 BC	Symposium	Plato	Dialogue	35,600	2 h
c. 375 BC	The Republic	Plato	Treatise	212,446	12 h
c. 370 BC	Phaedrus	Plato	Dialogue	41,200	2 h
c. 340 BC	The Nicomachean Ethics	Aristotle	Treatise	116,452	6 h
125	The Enchiridion	Epictetus	Treatise	14,119	1 h
1532	The Prince	Niccolò Machiavelli	Political theory	31,000	2 h
1580	The Essays of Michel de Montaigne	Michel de Montaigne	Essays	517,000	29 h
1637	Discourse on the Method	René Descartes	Treatise	26,100	1 h
1651	Leviathan	Thomas Hobbes	Political theory	201,968	11 h
1670	Pascal’s Pensées	Blaise Pascal	Aphorisms	113,900	6 h
1677	Ethics	Benedictus de Spinoza	Treatise	91,000	5 h
1729	A Modest Proposal	Jonathan Swift	Pamphlet	3,467	1 h
1739	A Treatise of Human Nature	David Hume	Treatise	225,200	13 h
1748	An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding	David Hume	Treatise	48,000	3 h
1776	Common Sense	Thomas Paine	Pamphlet	22,127	1 h
1776	The Wealth of Nations	Adam Smith	Political economy	389,724	22 h
1781	The Critique of Pure Reason	Immanuel Kant	Treatise	212,000	12 h
1788	The Federalist Papers	Alexander Hamilton	Essays	190,000	11 h
1792	A Vindication of the Rights of Woman	Mary Wollstonecraft	Political writing	83,000	5 h
1819	The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.	Washington Irving	Essays and sketches	122,000	7 h
1832	On War	Carl von Clausewitz	Treatise	296,700	16 h
1836	Nature	Ralph Waldo Emerson	Essay	15,400	1 h
1841	Essays: First and Second Series	Ralph Waldo Emerson	Essays	133,000	7 h
1848	The Communist Manifesto	Karl Marx	Pamphlet	14,000	1 h
1854	Walden	Henry David Thoreau	Nature writing	106,298	6 h
1859	On Liberty	John Stuart Mill	Political theory	52,000	3 h
1859	On the Origin of Species	Charles Darwin	Scientific treatise	200,000	11 h
1863	Utilitarianism	John Stuart Mill	Treatise	30,600	2 h
1880	Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome	E. M. Berens	Mythology	109,063	6 h
1880	The Art of Money Getting	P. T. Barnum	Lecture	14,300	1 h
1883	Thus Spake Zarathustra	Friedrich Nietzsche	Philosophical prose	90,000	5 h
1886	Beyond Good and Evil	Friedrich Nietzsche	Aphorisms	62,000	3 h
1887	The Genealogy of Morals	Friedrich Nietzsche	Treatise	52,000	3 h
1899	The Theory of the Leisure Class	Thorstein Veblen	Treatise	106,000	6 h
1902	The Varieties of Religious Experience	William James	Lectures	154,000	9 h
1903	The Souls of Black Folk	W. E. B. Du Bois	Essays	69,000	4 h
1907	Pragmatism	William James	Lectures	52,000	3 h
1912	The Problems of Philosophy	Bertrand Russell	Treatise	45,900	3 h
1916	Democracy and Education	John Dewey	Treatise	135,000	8 h
1922	Myths and Legends of China	E. T. C. Werner	Mythology	135,969	8 h

How this list was made

A title is listed when the book page records the profile Nonfiction. That field is set from the book’s own metadata, so novels with documentary material, such as The Jungle, stay on the fiction shelf.

Word counts are for the editions here; reading times at 300 words a minute, the same rate used for fiction.

The forty-two titles divide into argument, recollection and description: fifteen treatises, four essay collections, three dialogues, three works of political theory and the rest pamphlets, lectures and aphorisms, by thirty-three authors. The Essays of Michel de Montaigne is the longest at 517,000 words; A Modest Proposal at 3,467 is the shortest and the one most often quoted out of context.

Questions readers ask

Where should I start?

The Prince, at 60,000 words, is the shortest classic of political advice; Walden is the best introduction to the personal essay.

Why is The Voyage of the Beagle here?

Because it is a travel journal and a scientific record at once, and its page records Nonfiction. Darwin’s argument is in the notes, not the narrative.

Is poetry nonfiction?

No. Poems and epics have their own shelf; this one is prose argument and record.

Part of all themed reading lists. Nearby shelves: Russian Classics · French Classics · American Classics · authors A–Z · word counts and reading times.