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Francis Marion was probably the most romantic figure to emerge from the American Revolutionary War. Of Huguenot ancestry, Marion was descended from a French family fleeing the religious persecutions of Louis XIV. Listen to this great history as you learn how Marion used guerrilla tactics to defeat one British force after another. It is a thrilling tale of patriotism, determination, and sacrifice. 

Although best known as a lyrical poet, Mörike's brilliant novella about Mozart is one of the most penetrating and revealing studies of the great composer's personality ever written. The story is a work of fiction based on Mozart's actual journey in the fall of 1787 from Vienna to Prague, where he was to stage his new opera Don Giovanni. Mörike takes this historic event and has Mozart and his wife, Konstanze, spend some time during their journey in the company of the fictional family of a certain Count von Schinzberg.

The Book of Psalms is a book in both the Hebrew and Christian Bibles consisting of 150 poems originally written to be chanted or sung and accompanied by musical instruments. In fact, the word "psalm" comes from the Greek word "psalmoi", meaning "songs sung to a harp". In content they express virtually the entire range of the Jewish religious experience and faith.

Livy's purpose in writing his famous history was to show how Rome had started out as a city state full of brave, idealistic and virtuous citizens, but had then descended into the voracious, debauched, and immoral empire it had become by his own time in the late 1st century B.C. And the evidence was compelling.

Book three of Mommsen's history covers the 118 years from 264 to 146 BC, the period in which Rome became the undisputed master of the Mediterranean Basin. How did this happen, and why? Carthage was instrumental in this transformation. With the defeat and expulsion of Pyrrhus in 275 BC, Rome had moved to consolidate its hold over the Italian peninsula, a position it had acquired in a century of almost continuous warfare with Italian tribes.

Second Lieutenant James Madison Page was a Union officer of Company A, Sixth Michigan Cavalry during the Civil War. After participating in many skirmishes and battles, including Gettysburg, Page was captured in Virginia on September 21, 1863 by Confederate forces along the Rapidan. After spending several months in various prison camps, he arrived at Andersonville Prison in Georgia on February 27, 1864. He would remain there seven months during a time when the prison population grew from 10,000 to over 30,000.

Conrad’s Lord Jim is the iconic story of a romantic young man and his struggle with guilt and self-loathing. The novel begins with Jim’s earlier life as a ship’s officer. He and the other crew members abandon an imperiled vessel and its passengers after a mysterious collision reveals a dangerous bulge below the water line. But the ship does not sink and Jim survives to face an official inquiry. He is stripped of his license and faces universal scorn and the reality of his own guilt.

Book two of Theodore Mommsen's history begins in 509 BC, when the last Roman king was expelled and a republican form of government was formed. Starting here, we trace Rome's political and cultural development under an aristocracy whose puritan fanaticism is legendary. But security from surrounding hostile tribes was of uppermost concern, and the city was constantly at war with one tribe or another. During the fifth century BC, the Republic's energies were directed toward uniting or subduing her neighbors.

Book 5 of Mommsen's history of the Roman Republic brings to a conclusion this most magnificent of historical narratives. It begins with the death of Sulla and ends with the accession to power of the greatest and most fascinating Roman of them all, Gaius Julius Caesar.

In Volume Three, Gibbon picks up his story with the chaotic events following the retreat of the Eastern Roman Empire from the Italian peninsula in the seventh century. As the German conquerors settle into the new territories they took from the old Roman Empire, Islam suddenly emerges on the Arabian peninsula and sweeps across North Africa and into Spain. Muslim forces move north and threaten Constantinople itself.

The sonnets are a collection numbering 154 poems dealing with themes such as the passage of time, love, beauty, and mortality. They were probably written over a long period of Shakespeare's life up until 1609, when they were first printed. The first 17 poems, traditionally referred to as the "procreation sonnets", are addressed to a young man urging him to marry and have children in order to immortalize his beauty by passing it on to his descendants.

The Meditations are a series of private reflections written in Greek by a Roman emperor immersed in the administration of an empire beset by wars on its frontiers and natural disasters in its interior. It is the work of a great man seeking philosophical and spiritual solace in the midst of human chaos and uncertainty. This beautiful piece of ancient literature has been the companion of many leaders over the centuries who turned to inner reflection in times of unrest. Its Stoic philosophy has been much admired and emulated.  

Widely considered the greatest of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories, The Hound of the Baskervilles was originally serialized in The Strand Magazine from August 1901 to April 1902. It is the third of only four short novels Doyle wrote about his super sleuth. Set largely on Dartmoor in Devon in England's West Country, it is the gloom-enshrouded story of murder inspired by the family legend of a gigantic, demonic hound of supernatural origin.

Volume Two begins with the accession of the Roman Emperor Valens in the year 364, a period which heralded vast movements of barbarian tribes from the north and east. The Huns move from the confines of Mongolia westward into Europe, pushing the German tribes in terror before them, who in turn move across the Rhine and Danube into Roman territory. The names of Goths, Franks, Lombards and Vandals will become part of the daily vocabulary. Gibbon describes in matchless style the dramatic events as the Western Roman Empire disintegrates under the pressure of Germanic invasion and internal corruption.

The Odyssey is the greatest adventure story ever written, and one of the great epic masterpieces of Western literature For almost 3,000 years, it has been a storehouse of ancient Greek folklore and myth. It is also our very first novel, if we think of it in terms of romantic plot development, realistic characterizations, frequent change of scene, and heroic dramatic devices.

This magnificent novel is about the murder of a miserly, aged pawnbroker and her younger sister by a radical, destitute St. Petersburg student named Raskolnikov, and the emotional, mental, and physical effects that follow. It is a remarkable masterpiece about a man's turbulent inner life and his relationship to others and to society at large. Dostoevsky explored the human condition on many levels in this great piece, and among the main themes the novel explores is the rather strange theory that criminals have a spiritual need to be punished - that indeed they demand it.

The Goths are the most enigmatic of all the ancient German tribes. Their name today is still widely in use for a variety of cultural and artistic movements. But unlike other famous German tribes whose names are still descriptive of nations they founded - the Franks, the Lombards, the Angles, the Saxons and the Alemanni - the Goths simply disappeared. The subject of Henry Bradley's splendid short history is tracing the rise, the migrations, and the impact of the Goths on European history along with their spectacular fall.

The Cassique of Kiawah is the romantic story of Harry Calvert, a privateer in service to King Charles II of England. Set in the year 1684, it is a colonial romance set in South Carolina. Because of a change of political winds in London, Calvert is hiding his crew and ship in the backwaters near Charleston. He sets out in disguise to see his friend, the governor of Carolina, in order to gauge the situation. But then he learns that his titled older brother, who has become the Cassique (or lord) of the beautiful island of Kiawah, is in the area and has married the woman Harry was previously in love with back in England....

The 19th century witnessed some of the most far-reaching social and political changes in English history. In volume 4, we trace the arc of England's march to worldwide imperial dominance along with the nation's reckoning with her poorest citizens. It is a story of contrast and courage. The contrast is between those with titles, money, and power...and those lacking any or all of these.

The first crusade of 1096 unleashed a wave of impassioned, personally felt, deeply pious Christian fury that was expressed in a mass movement centered in France and spreading to other European kingdoms, including Flanders, German speaking principalities, and Italy. Master historian Harold Lamb tells the incredible story of how Pope Urban II fanned the sparks of Christian anger into a mighty conflagration of righteous indignation with his speech of 1095 in Clermont. The resulting armed clashes produced some of the most amazing stories you will ever hear.