Free History Books to Download in May 2026

In the story of his life from early childhood through 1921, Mohandas K. Gandhi candidly reveals his young investigations into sin and seeking atonement; the philosophy, art, and literature that influenced his thoughts and ideas; and his first experiences with politics and protest, which would provide the foundation for his nonviolent struggle for justice, equality, and Indian independence from the British Empire.

Gandhi’s intention in setting down an account of his formative years was to clarify the spiritual principles by which he lived and to inspire individuals and movements in their quests for personal and political freedom. The timeless lessons to be derived from the autobiography of this dedicated seeker of truth and brilliant leader continue to resonate wherever freedom is challenged by tyranny.

This memoir chronicles the Tennessee soldier’s journey from conscientious objector to decorated World War I hero.

In the 1941 film Sergeant York, actor Gary Cooper played a real American soldier, Sgt. Alvin C. York, as he served in World War I. The film garnered an Academy Award for Cooper and further notoriety for York, an American hero.

This book, Sergeant York and the Great War, chronicles York’s early years in the backwoods of northern Tennessee until he was drafted into the US Army to serve overseas during World War I. Also featured is York’s war diary, detailing life in the trenches.

This nineteenth-century novel by the author of Rip Van Winkle offers a satirical history of New York, from the creation of the world to the fall of New Amsterdam.

Washington Irving’s debut novel, Knickerbocker’s History of New York was an immediate sensation when it was first published in 1809. Posing as the work of a fictional Dutch historian named Dietrich Knickerbocker, it both catapulted Irving’s literary reputation and established the “Father Knickerbocker” character as a popular icon of New York.

Knickerbocker discusses the development of New Netherland, the seventeenth-century Dutch colony, with a special focus on New Amsterdam, the settlement located on present-day Manhattan. The thoroughly tongue-in-cheek chronicle contains “among many surprising and curious matters, the unutterable ponderings of Walter the Doubter, the disastrous projects of William the Testy, and the chivalric achievements of Peter [Stuyvesant] the Headstrong.”

A courageous female journalist’s classic exposé of the horrific treatment of the mentally ill in 19th-century America

In 1887, Nellie Bly accepted an assignment from publisher Joseph Pulitzer of the New York World and went undercover at the lunatic asylum on Blackwell Island, America’s first municipal mental hospital. Calling herself “Nellie Brown,” she was able to convince policemen, a judge, and a series of doctors of her madness with a few well-practiced facial expressions of derangement.

At the institution, Bly discovered the stuff of nightmares. Mentally ill patients were fed rotten, inedible food; violently abused by a brutal, uncaring staff; and misdiagnosed, mistreated, or generally ignored by the doctors and so-called mental health experts entrusted with their care. To her horror, Bly encountered sane patients who had been committed on the barest of pretenses and came to the shocking realization that, while the Blackwell Island asylum was remarkably easy to get into, it was nearly impossible to leave.