Title: Magna Charta (Latin title)
Author: Lords of England
Date document in collection was printed: 1576
Description*: Rare, early 16th-century printing of the Magna Carta in English, the last of only three 16th-century editions in English of the Magna Carta translated from the original Latin. The Magna Carta is "one of the central documents in the history of Western civilization, . . . the symbol of political liberty, . . . [and] the foundation of modern constitutional government." 
(Link to full text: British Library)

Title: Historiae   
Author: Herodotus
Date document in collection was printed: 1558
Description:  Master story teller, traveller, ethnographer, and “Father of History,” Herodotus of Halicarnassus (ca. 484 – 425 B.C.), says in this work that  he is presenting background material for the confrontation of Persia and Greece in the days of his grandsires.  This gives him an excuse to  devote the first half of his work to an historical and anthropological study of all peoples known to him, filling the entirety of Book II, for  example, with the curious ways of the Egyptians and folkloric tales of the pharaohs related to him by his tour guides.  With unequalled verse, good humor, and style, Herodotus gives us a digressive, often intimate picture of the peoples he considers, while warning us that his information is only as accurate as his sources.  When he comes to the events of the Persian War, still within living memory, he shows his merit as a true historian and the first one to combine systematic research with a spellbinding presentation and epic sweep, in such memorable  episodes as the heroic Spartan defense of the pass of Thermopylae.   Alexandrine scholars divided his historical accounts into nine books,  each of them named after one of the Muses.  Ours is a Latin version of Herodotus’ work, which Sebastian Gyphius issued first in 1542.  The  translation used was done originally in 1474 by Lorenzo Valla (1406-1457), the pioneering Italian humanist and controversialist.

Title: Utopia
Author: Thomas More
Date document in collection was printed: 1624
Description:  First Corrected Editonof Robinson's translation of More's "Utopia".  Utopia was published in the great year of Erasmian reform, when the  new enlightenment seemed about to carry all before it.  Here is the difference between Erasmus and More.  More had been born and  brought up in the law, the most traditional and the most English of all professions: to him, human institutes were not a matter for radical,  theoretical reform, but were organic things to which change came slowly.  In Utopia More is concerned to show that the old, medieval institutes, if freed from abuse, are the best; not the new theoretic reforms, which he justly feared.  He is a saint to the Catholic, and a  predecessor of Marx to the Communist.  His manifesto is and will be required reading for both, and for all shades of opinion between.
(Link to fulltext: Utopia - an edition published in 1743, Google Book Search)

Title: The Prince
Author: Niccolo Machiavelli       
Date document in collection was printed: 1640
Description: "Hitherto political speculation had tended to be a rhetorical exercise based on the implicit assumption of Church or Empire. Machiavelli founded the science of modern politics on the study of mankind... Politics was a science to be divorced entirely from ethics, and nothing  must stand in the way of its machinery". "Niccolo Machiavelli, is a popular symbol for the... completely unprincipled, and unscrupulous  politician whose whole philosophy is that the end justifies the means. The highest law to Machiavelli, it is universally believed, was political  expediency... From a comparative reading of [The Discourses and The Prince], one must come to the startling conclusion that Machiavelli  was a convinced republican. He had no liking for despotism, and considered a combination of popular and monarchical government best.  No ruler was safe without the favor of his people. The most stable states are those ruled by princes checked by constitutional limitations... His ideal government was the old Roman republic, and he constantly harked back to it in the Discourses... It is hardly disputable that no man  previous to Karl Marx has had as revolutionary an impact on political thought as Machiavelli". "[He] more than any other political thinker  created the meaning that has been attached to the state in modern political usage". As Lord Acton noted, "The authentic interpreter of Machiavelli is the whole of later history."
(Link to fulltext: The Prince - edition published in 1810, Google Book Search.)

Title: Boston Massacre (print)
Author: Paul Revere
Date document in collection was printed: 1770
Description: An event occurring on March 5, 1770 that helped spark the American Revolution. Tensions caused by the military occupation of Boston increased as soldiers fired into a crowd of civilians. What began as a small skirmish turned into a quickly growing mob of American soldiers and civilians pelting items at British soldiers. The soldiers fired. Five Americans died, including Crispus Attucks, an African-American and traditionally the first-known casualty of the American Revolution. The event was illustrated by engraver Paul Revere. Revere incorrectly depicted the event as occurring in close quarters, with no snow on the ground, with Crispus Attucks as being white, and with the British commander behind his lined-up troops. Christian Remick, who colored the engraving, incorrectly depicted the event as happening during the day by adding a bright blue sky.
(Link to online image www.earlyamerica.com)

Title: Declaration of Independence
Author: Second Continental Congress
Date document in collection was printed:  1777
Description: One of three known copies of the third printing of the Declaration of Independence and the only copy in private hands. It was printed by John Dunlop, a printer in Philadelphia who published numerous pieces for the Continental Congress and the colony/state of Pennsylvania.
(Link to full text: The National Archives )

Title:Common Sense  
Author:Thomas Paine 
Date document in collection was printed:  1776
Description: First edition of Common Sense printed in England, first issue with rare general half-title for Common Sense and Chalmer's Plain Truth.
(Link to fulltext Common Sense ushistory.org)

Title: Rights of Man
Author: Thomas Paine
Date document in collection was printed:  1792
Description: A man whose writings shook the world and whose preachments on democracy have endured for two centuries. Written as a response to Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, Paine opened the work with a note to General Washington, "I present you a small treatise in defense of those principles of freedom which your exemplary virtue hath so eminently contributed to establish."
(Links to full text: The Rights of Man edition published in 1906, Google Book Search)

Title: Alien and Sedition Act
Date document in collection was printed:  1799
Description: The proceedings of the House of Representatives of the United Staes, with respect to the petitions praying for a repeal of the Alien and Sedition Laws. John Nocholas, Virginia Congressman and strict-construction Jeffersonian and his brothers Wilson Cary and George were outspoken opponents of the Alien and Sedition Act, and each sought its repeal in vain during this session of Congress.  This document leads with the House Report, refusing to repeal the Act despite claims of its unconstitutional limitation on free speech and the absence of Congressional  power to remove aliens.  The committee concludes that the First Amendment guarantees only the rights to publish without prior government restraint, the author remaining answerable to the public and individuals, for any abuse.  Moreover, liberty of the press has never been protected “the publication of false, scandalous and malicious writings against the government, written or published with intent to do mischief.”
(Link to text: Alien and Sedition Act 1798, www.ourdocuments.gov)

           

Title: The Federalist Papers
Authors: James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay
Date document in collection was printed: 1788
Description: Volumes I and II bound together. The Federalist Papers are a collection of 85 essays written between October 1787 and May 1788. The essays were published anonymously, under the pen name "Publius," in a variety of New York State newspapers. Their original purpose was to convince the reluctant New York electorate to ratify the newly proposed Constitution of the United States .
(Link to full text: Library of Congress)

Title: Essay on the Principle of Population
Author: Thomas Robert Malthus
Date document in collection was printed: 1803
Description: Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834), political economist, is best remembered for this, his magnum opus. A unitarian and ordained clergyman, he was a member of the Political Economy Club, the French institute, and one of the royal associates of the Royal Society of Literature. The present work, in which Malthus believes he has found the clue to human suffering, is best summarized by Malthus’ own words: “I said that population, when unchecked, increased in a geometrical ratio; and subsistence for man in an arithmetical ratio.”  The facts of his argument were not new at the time the first edition was published (1798, anonymously), but rather the emphasis which he placed on a simple generalization elicited from them. Following the publication of the first, Malthus answered the argument that he had not been concrete enough by adding additional facts and figures to support his basic principles as well as stressing the check to increase of population provided by moral restraint.
(Link to fulltext: Essay on the Principle of Population, 1809 edition, Google Book Search)

Title: Travels to the Source of the Missouri River
Authors: Lewis and Clark
Date document in collection was printed: 1814
Description: Meriwether Lewis and William Clark's travels to the source of the Missouri River and across the American Continent to the Pacific Ocean performed by order of the Government of the United States , in the years 1804, 1805, and 1806. 
(Link to full text: Travels to the Source of the Missouri River - edition published in 1815, Google Book Search)

Title: The Emancipation Proclamation
Author: Abraham Lincoln
Date document in collection was printed: 1862
Description: First public printing in the New York Times September 23, 1862.  The proclamation was issued by President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, declaring that all slaves in areas still in rebellion against the United States were henceforth to be free.
(Links to full text:
The National Archives
Full text book in NetLibrary requires Ivy Tech login off-campus)

Title: The Gettysburg Address
Author: Abraham Lincoln
Date document in collection was printed: 1863
Description: Rare, first book-form publication of "one of the supreme utterances of the principles of democratic freedom." On November 19, 1863, Lincoln arose after Edward Everett's two-hour dedication of the cemetery at Gettysburg and "delivered the 'few appropriate remarks' requested of him, and in ten sentences did unforgettable justice to the thousands of young Americans who had struggled with incredible bravery."
(Links to full text:
Library of Congress
Project Gutenberg
Full text book in NetLibrary requires Ivy Tech login off-campus)

Title: Capital: A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production
Author: Karl Marx, co-author Frederick Engels
Date document in collection was printed: 1889, 1st American printing
Description: The classic economic study which was to change the face of twentieth century politics and geography for nearly 75 years. Marx’s monumental work, begun in 1867, was actually left unfinished and was “edited” and completed by Frederick Engels for publication.
(Link to fulltext: Capital, 1909 edition, Google Book Search)

Title: Bible (Manuscript)
Romans 9-12 with 1582 English translation. 
Hebrews 7-10 with 1582 English translation.
Daniel 10-11 with 1582 English translation.
2nd Peter 1-3 with 1582 English translation.

Title: Citie of God
Author: Saint Augustine
Date document in collection was printed: 1610
Description:  Early Christian church father and philosopher.  Received his early training primarily in Latin literature and earned his living  as a teacher of rhetoric in Carthage, Rome, and Milan.  He joined the Manichaeans for a number of years but became disillusioned and was converted to Christianity.  His Confessions vividly record his spiritual experiences and development during this period. For the remainder of his life, he  preached and wrote prolifically, defining points of Christian doctrine and engaging in theoretical controversy with the Manichaeans, the Donatists, and the Pelagians.  He maintained the importance of a single, unified Church and developed a theory of sin, grace, and predestination that not only became basic to the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church, but later was also used as the justification for the tenets of Calvin, Luther, and the Jansenists.  City of God is an apology for Christianity against the accusation that the Church was responsible for the decline of the Roman Empire.  It  interprets human history as a conflict between the City of God, which includes the body of Christians belonging to the Church, and the  Earthly City, composed of pagans and heretical Christians.  Augustine forsees that, through the will of God, the people of the City of God  will eventually win immortality, those in the Earthly City destruction.

Title: Institution of the Christian Religion
Author: John Calvin
Date document in collection was printed: 1611
Description: (Adapted from Jean Cauvin, 1509-1564) French Protestant reformer. Calvin’s theological doctrines had tremendous influence, particularly in the Puritan religion of England, Scotland, and America.  Calvin had an early background of humanism; as a student of Latin and Greek, he was familiar with the writings of Plato, Seneca, and St.  Augustine.  Because of the radical Protestant views expressed in a public speech he wrote in 1533, to be delivered at an inaugural ceremony at the University of Paris, Calvin was forced to flee the capital and soon France as well.  He established himself in Geneva, strictly enforcing his theological doctrines and rules of conduct.  His greatest work is Institutes of the Christian Religion.  Calvinism as a religious system is the theological foundation of the Reformed, or Presbyterian, Churches, which is to say, of non-Lutheran,  non-Anglican Protestantism.  It recognized only the Bible as a source of knowledge and of authority in questions of belief.  Its chief  principles were (1) the total depravity of man, as a result of Adam’s fall; (2) the absolute power of the will of God; (3) the superiority of faith to good works, since man has no will of his own; (4) salvation by grace from God rather that by any act of the will of man; and (5) the  divine predestination of those to be saved, or the Elect, although, since no one can tell whether he is a member of the Elect, all must lead holy and pious lives, acknowledging God’s supreme power and obeying his commands. Calvin’s pessimistic interpretation of Christian doctrine was coupled with a repressive attitude toward pleasure and frivolity. The zeal with which his followers taught and imposed his views assured his position as one of the most influential theologians in the West.  The most influential theological work of the reformation.   As a kind of handbook or companion to Calvin’s commentaries on the individual  books of the Bible, it dealt with the most salient issues of religion under six headings: the law, the faith, prayer, the sacraments of baptism  and communion, the sacraments added by the church, and Christian liberty and church discipline.  The book was originally published in Latin, but Calvin translated it into French in 1541 and produced an augmented version in 1560.
(Link to text, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1816 edition, Google Book Search.

Title: Works of Josephus
Author: Flavius Josephus
Date document in collection was printed: 1655
Description: Josephus was a Jewish historian enlisted by the Roman emperor, Titus, to serve as an interpreter during the siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE.  Josephus was rewarded for his effort with Roman citizenship and pension. In 77-78 CE, he published The Jewish War. In 94 CE he published his second great work, Antiquities of the Jews, which traces the history of Jews from creation to the end of the Jewish war.
(Link to full text: Christian Classics Ethereal Library)

Title: The Morals of Confucius
Author: Confucius
Date document in collection was printed: 1691
Description: Chinese name of Confucius is Kung Fu-tse, 551 - 479 BCE. The dominant Chinese political and ethical philosopher and would-be reformer, Confucius advocated a this-worldly, rational philosophy, which emphasized humanity, reverence for the ancient sages, and government by personal virtue.
(Link to brief biography of Confucius: Reading Revolutions
Link to full text (requires creation of a free account): Shuhai Wenyan)

Title: The Holy Qur'an
Date document in collection was printed: 1806
Description: The first Qur'an, the sacred book of Islam, printed in America . In Arabic, the word means "reading." Written in the purest Arabic, it is considered the Word of God, the uncreated and eternal truth revealed to Muhammad by the angel Gabriel. The tradition that the text should be transmitted orally had to be broken under the third Caliph, Othman, when the best Koran reciters had fallen in battle. There are 114 suras or chapters in the Qur'an, unnumbered but individually named.
(Links to full text:
Humanities Text Initiative
Full text book in NetLibrary requires Ivy Tech login off-campus)

Title: Bhagavad-Gita
Date document in collection was printed:  1885
Description: Bhagavad-Gita (from the Mahabharata) Being a discourse between Arjuna, Prince of India, and the supreme being under the form of Krishna.  Translated from the Sanskrit text by  Edwin Arnold.

Title: Frankenstein
Author: Mary Shelly
Date document in collection was printed:  1869
Description: Mary Shelley wrote in the convention of the gothic novel.  Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus is her best known work. Frankenstein, a young student, animates a soulless monster made out of corpses from churchyards and dissecting rooms by means of galvanism.  Longing for sympathy and shunned by everyone, the creature ultimately turns to evil and brings dreadful retribution on the   student for usurping the Creator’s prerogative, finally destroying him.    Shelley gave no name to the monster, but he is commonly called Frankenstein after his creator, the student.  This, of course, is an error.
(Link to text: Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, 1891 edition, Google Book Search)

Title: Sketches and Eccentricities of Col. David Crockett
Author: David Crockett
Date document in collection was printed: 1834
Description: Compilation of the now famous stories ascribed to the personage of Davy Crockett, including "Not yours to give."

Title: Leaves of Grass
Author: Walt Whitman
Date document in collection was printed:  1942
Description: The limited editions club "Leaves of Grass," one of 1500 copies signed by photographer Edward Weston.  This edition is highlighted by  many striking images by Weston.  Of special importance: this edition contains the 1855 Introduction to "Leaves of Grass."
(Link to text: Leaves of Grass, 1884 edition, Google Book Search)

Title: Animal Farm
Author: George Orwell
Date document in collection was printed:  1946
Description: First edition proof copy (pre-published). Advance reading copy of the first edition of Orwell's classic parable of dictatorial socialism. A biting commentary that is accessible to nearly all ages. Orwell has presented a pointed look at political systems and at the same time allowed for insight into the human dilemma of existence.
(Link to full text: eBooks@Adelaide )

Title: 1984
Author: George Orwell
Date document in collection was printed: 1949
Description: A dystopian novel that tells the story of Winston Smith and his degradation by the totalitarian state in which he lives.
(Link to full text: eBooks@Adelaide )

*Most descriptions adapted from: Wisdom of the Ages Athenaeum: Description List