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A Spanish friar documents the brutal treatment of Caribbean natives at the hands of colonial authorities in the sixteenth century.

After traveling to the New World, Dominican friar Bartolomé de Las Casas witnessed conquistadors wreak unimaginable horrors upon the Indigenous people of the Caribbean. He later dedicated his life to fighting for their protection. Following numerous failed attempts to reason with authorities in Spain, he chose to document everything he had seen over a span of fifty years and to give it to Spain’s Prince Philip II.

In A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, Las Casas catalogues the atrocities he observed the Spanish colonial authorities inflict upon the native people. He discusses the brutal torture, mass genocide, and enslavement. He passionately pleas for an end to this treatment and for the native peoples to be given basic human rights.

The classic first-person account of the sinking of the Titanic by a journalist and survivor of this historic tragedy.

In April of 1912, the luxury ocean liner RMS Titanic embarked on its maiden voyage. Leaving Southampton, England, its passengers ranged from a “who’s who” of the British upper class to humble travelers hoping to start new lives in America. But very few of those aboard would survive after the ship collided with an iceberg in the North Atlantic.

W. E. B. Du Bois’s seminal treatise on the African American experience

The problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line.

W. E. B. Du Bois was arguably the most progressive African American leader of the early twentieth century, and this collection of essays is his masterpiece. An examination of the black experience in America following emancipation, and an introduction to the historic concept of “double-consciousness” as it pertains to that experience, The Souls of Black Folk is an extraordinary literary achievement—a provocative, profound, and courageous clarion call.

This early-twentieth-century adventure travel memoir by a female explorer is “the sort of thriller yarn that keeps you up all night and is too soon over” (Ms.).

In this extraordinary mix of travelogue and autobiography, Madame Alexandra David-Néel details her 1923 expedition to Lhasa as the first Western woman to enter Tibet’s Forbidden City. Recounting how she traveled with her adopted son, posing as a beggar and relying on her fluency in Tibetan dialects and culture, David-Néel relates a story of survival among harsh conditions and the ever-present danger of being discovered as a white woman, as well as her triumphant meeting with the Dalai-Lama. A compelling narrative by an adventurer, explorer, and passionate student of Buddhism, My Journey to Lhasa is an inspiring work of travel literature by a remarkable woman.