Free History Books to Download in January 2025

A classic of American autobiography—the remarkable story of Helen Keller’s early life and education

At nineteen months old, Helen Keller was stricken with a mysterious illness that left her deaf and blind. For the next five years, she was trapped in the silent dark, her only means of communication a few dozen rudimentary signs. Her inability to express herself was a great source of frustration, and as she grew older, Helen became prone to angry outbursts and fits of despair. Her family sought help, and in March of 1887, twenty-year-old Anne Sullivan arrived from the Perkins Institution for the Blind. One month later, teacher and student made the first of many incredible breakthroughs. By placing one of Helen’s hands under cool running water and tracing the letters w-a-t-e-r on her other hand, Anne was able to convey the great mystery of language: that every object has a name. As Helen would later write in The Story of My Life, “That living word awakened my soul.”

Covering the first twenty-two years of Helen Keller’s life, from that miraculous moment at the water pump to her acceptance into Radcliffe College, The Story of My Life is one of the most beloved and inspiring autobiographies ever written. The basis for The Miracle Worker, the Tony Award–winning play and Academy Award–winning film, its heartening message has touched millions of lives and torn down countless barriers the world over.

Wisdom from one of the greatest philosophical minds in all of Roman history

Divided into twelve books, these meditations chronicle Aurelius’s personal quest for self-improvement. This enduring text from one of history’s greatest warriors and leaders has been compared to St. Augustine’s Confessions for its timelessness, clarity, and candor. These writings, composed between 161 and 180 CE, set forth Aurelius’s Stoic philosophy and stress the importance of acting in a way that is moral and just rather than self-indulgent.

This edition of Darwin’s life story restores previously censored passages on religion and the scientist’s opinions of his contemporaries.

Darwin wrote his autobiography in 1876, at the age of sixty-seven, hoping it would prove interesting to his children and grandchildren. Preparing the book for a wider audience, his family initially sought to protect his legacy by removing passages they found too personal or controversial.

This restored edition, which appeared one hundred years after the publication of On the Origin of Species, was edited by Darwin’s own granddaughter Nora Barlow, who wished to share the text as it originally existed in her family’s archives.

Shedding light on the women in Darwin’s life and his evolving views on religion, The Autobiography of Charles Darwin delves deep into his brilliant yet shy and reclusive personality, from his childhood love of nature to the reception of his groundbreaking theories on evolution. It also includes previously unpublished notes and letters on family matters, as well as Darwin’s dispute with Samuel Butler.

One of the masterworks of Western civilization from the Ancient Greek author and orator known as the “Father of History.”

Written in the fifth century BC, The Histories is a wide-ranging inquiry into the Greco-Persian Wars and beyond. Factual accounts of military matters on land and at sea, commanders, governments, and rulers are juxtaposed with Greek mythology. As inspiring to travel writers and journalists as it is to historians, this epic work includes a wealth of geographical and ethnographical information on the Middle East, Northern Africa, and Greece. It remains one of the West’s most important sources regarding the ancient world.