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Real Lives, Explained

The plot, the people, the point and the ending — then the Boovie film, where there is one.

Popular Lives & Letters

In the library
Meditations
Emperor of Rome Marcus Aurelius · ideas
The story in one page
The Confessions of St. Augustine
A man seeks the divine while chasing every distraction in North Africa.
of Hippo Saint Augustine · religious
The story in one page
Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
A runaway apprentice tracks his moral failures on a grid, builds forts, and tries to organize a continent.
Benjamin Franklin · biography
The story in one page
The Diary of Samuel Pepys
A naval bureaucrat keeps a secret shorthand diary of his lunch, his lawsuits, and the King’s return to the throne.
Samuel Pepys · collection
The story in one page
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers
A catalog of Greek thinkers, covering their world-changing theories, their embarrassing habits, and the exact lists of every book they wrote.
Diogenes Laertius · biography
The story in one page
Life on the Mississippi
The river is a moving target, the training is brutal, and the pilot knows everything.
Mark Twain · biography
The story in one page
Memoirs of the Duchesse de Dino (Afterwards Duchesse de Talleyrand et de Sagan), 1831-1835
A high-stakes diary of European diplomacy, featuring an aging Prince, a clever Duchess, and the constant threat of iron-lined carriages.
Dorothée duchesse de Dino · biography
The story in one page
Pen-portraits of literary women
A collection of personal anecdotes, room descriptions, and childhood memories concerning the nineteenth century's most famous women writers.
Helen Gray Cone · ideas
The story in one page
Boswell's Life of Johnson
A man follows his idol around London for twenty years taking notes. The idol survives.
James Boswell · biography
The story in one page
The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus
A son-in-law defends a general’s legacy while mapping the fierce tribes that Roman legions couldn’t quite tame.
Cornelius Tacitus · biography
The story in one page
Life and Death of John of Barneveld
After forty years of statecraft, an aging diplomat discovers that even the most logical treaties cannot stop a religious civil war.
John Lothrop Motley · biography
The story in one page
Two Years Before the Mast
A Harvard student trades his books for a tar bucket, a bunk in a wet forecastle, and a voyage around Cape Horn.
Richard Henry Dana · biography
The story in one page
Letters of Marcus Tullius Cicero
A Roman senator navigates civil war, manages his secretary’s health, and hosts Julius Caesar’s two thousand soldiers for dinner.
Marcus Tullius Cicero · ideas
The story in one page
Letters of Pliny
A high-ranking Roman governor asks his Emperor for advice on everything from theater architecture to the legal status of philosophers.
the Younger Pliny · ideas
The story in one page
The Memorabilia
A retired general lists every time his old teacher was actually a useful, law-abiding, and deeply pious citizen.
Xenophon · biography
In the library
The Life and Letters of Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, Volumes 1 and 2
Ogier Ghislain de Busbecq · ideas
The story in one page
Apologia pro vita sua
Accused of being a secret Roman agent, an Oxford scholar details the slow, documented collapse of his Anglican faith.
John Henry Newman · biography
The story in one page
Autobiography
A father attempts to build the perfect thinking machine, only for the machine to discover poetry, feelings, and parliamentary politics.
John Stuart Mill · biography
The story in one page
Works of John Bunyan
A tinker sits in a damp prison and writes the blueprints for his own soul.
John Bunyan · collection
The story in one page
Elizabeth Montagu, the queen of the bluestockings, Volumes 1 and 2
A woman collects 68 cases of letters and reshapes the social landscape of 18th-century London.
Mrs. Montagu · ideas
The story in one page
Andersonville: A Story of Rebel Military Prisons
Fifteen months inside the Confederacy’s most infamous prison system, told by a man who survived it.
John McElroy · biography
The story in one page
The Memoirs, Correspondence, and Miscellanies, From the Papers of Thomas Jefferson
A man writes thousands of letters across fifty years, and somehow, the inbox never empties.
Thomas Jefferson · ideas
The story in one page
Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison: Fifteen Years in Solitude
An American forger pranks the Bank of England, then discovers exactly how long fifteen years takes.
Austin Bidwell · biography
The story in one page
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave
A Maryland man learns to read by trading bread for lessons, fights a professional slave-breaker, and walks into freedom.
Frederick Douglass · biography
The story in one page
The Love Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft to Gilbert Imlay
A radical feminist pioneer survives the French Revolution only to be undone by a businessman’s vanishing act and cold letters.
Mary Wollstonecraft · ideas
The story in one page
The Love Letters of Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn; With Notes
A king wages war against his greatest enemy, Absence, using jewelry, venison, and very specific complaints about his headaches.
King of England Henry VIII · ideas
The story in one page
Eighty Years and More; Reminiscences 1815-1897
A revolutionary leader recounts eight decades of challenging laws, traveling by lumber wagon, and demanding the vote with Susan B. Anthony.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton · biography
The story in one page
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African
Kidnapped as a boy and sold in Barbados, a man trades barrels of pork to buy his own freedom and name.
Olaudah Equiano · biography
The story in one page
Susan B. Anthony
A Quaker reformer challenges the American mill, the abolitionist movement, and the Constitution to secure the vote for women.
Alma Lutz · biography
The story in one page
Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson
A woman is taken during a war, survives on moldy crumbs, and tracks her survival by miles.
Mary White Rowlandson · biography
The story in one page
Napoleon's Letters to Josephine, 1796-1812
The most powerful man in Europe conquers empires by day and begs his wife for more frequent letters by night.
Emperor of the French Napoleon I · ideas
The story in one page
Shakespeare's family
A biographer tracks the poet's relatives through rent rolls and tax lists, ignoring the literature entirely.
C. C. Stopes · biography
The story in one page
The Anabasis of Alexander
A Macedonian king crosses the Indus, outwits elephants, burns cities, and marries his way across two continents before his thirties.
Arrian · biography
The story in one page
Emily Brontë
A reclusive writer lives among moors and graveyards, transmuting family wreckage into a singular, haunting world.
A. Mary F. Robinson · biography
The story in one page
A Pickle for the Knowing Ones
A self-appointed Lord writes a book with zero punctuation and absolute certainty.
Timothy Dexter · biography
The story in one page
The Journal of Sir Walter Scott
A famous author faces bankruptcy, boredom, and the persistent intrusion of uninvited guests.
Walter Scott · biography
The story in one page
Life of St. Francis of Assisi
A merchant's son trades his silk for a coarse tunic, irritating the clergy and starting a revolution of radical poverty.
Paul Sabatier · religious
The story in one page
Reminiscences of a Stock Operator
The market has no memory, only prices. One man makes a career out of watching them move.
Edwin Lefevre · biography
The story in one page
Rizal's own story of his life
A nine-year-old hides his tears at boarding school and grows up to alarm an empire.
José Rizal · biography
The story in one page
The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave
A woman risks permanent exile in London to escape her owners and prove the brutality of West Indian salt works.
Mary Prince · biography
The story in one page
Some Jewish Witnesses For Christ
Two thousand years of rabbis, scholars, and chess players who left the synagogue for the church despite social and spiritual costs.
Aaron Bernstein · religious
The story in one page
The Bābur-nāma in English (Memoirs of Bābur)
A prince loses his home at twelve, conquers India, and meticulously catalogues every melon and bird he finds along the way.
Emperor of Hindustan Babur · biography
The story in one page
The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci
A Renaissance master catalogs everything from the anatomy of an arm to the physics of why the sky is blue.
da Vinci Leonardo · ideas
The story in one page
De Profundis
A man loses his freedom and name, only to decide that suffering is just a long, singular moment.
Oscar Wilde · ideas
In the library
Ecce Homo
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche · biography
The story in one page
Harriet Martineau
A deaf writer risks her fame for abolitionists, explains economics through fiction, and leaves her brain to science.
Florence Fenwick Miller · biography
The story in one page
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself
A mother hides in a seven-foot-square garret for seven years to outwit a determined slaveholder.
Harriet A. Jacobs · biography
In the library
Selected Works of Voltairine de Cleyre
Voltairine De Cleyre · collection
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Twelve Years a Slave
A free man is drugged in Washington, sold into Louisiana cotton fields, and spends twelve years proving he is not property.
Solomon Northup · biography
The story in one page
Fifty Years In The Northwest
A young man leaves Maine for the Mississippi, arriving to find no railroads and many mosquitoes.
William H. C. Folsom · biography
The story in one page
As I Remember
A woman remembers the nineteenth century, from cake-peddling ancestors to Civil War tension in Maryland.
Marian Gouverneur · biography
The story in one page
Autobiography of a Yogi
A seeker hunts for Himalayan masters, endures a university degree, and exports ancient breathing techniques to twentieth-century America.
Paramahansa Yogananda · biography
The story in one page
Sketches of Successful New Hampshire Men
A roll call of men who conquered the state, then left to build elsewhere.
John B. Clarke · collection
The story in one page
A Japanese Boy
A boy grows up in Imabari before jet planes and modern schools changed his home life.
Shigemi Shiukichi · biography
The story in one page
Up from Slavery: An Autobiography
A man born in a slave cabin builds a university from a hen-house and teaches a new generation how to build bricks.
Booker T. Washington · biography
The story in one page
A Little English Gallery
Louise Imogen Guiney unearths the quiet, forgotten lives of poets, playwrights, and friends behind famous men.
Louise Imogen Guiney · biography
The story in one page
Biographia Literaria
The author tries to define poetry, accidentally spends half the book arguing with his best friend.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge · ideas
The story in one page
The Lives of the Twelve Caesars
A secretary to Hadrian compiles the private habits, physical defects, and lethal dinner parties of Rome's most powerful men.
Suetonius · biography
The story in one page
English Eccentrics and Eccentricities
A catalog of Regency dandies, fanatical preachers, and misers who lived in dust-heaps or died for their wigs.
John Timbs · collection
The story in one page
Old Times on the Upper Mississippi
The river is a highway of soot, soundings, and razor fights in the engine room.
George Byron Merrick · biography
The story in one page
The Story of My Life
A girl loses sight and hearing at nineteen months, then finds a dictionary and renames the world.
Helen Keller · biography
The story in one page
The Black Hawk War Including a Review of Black Hawk's Life
A Sauk leader refuses to surrender his cornfields, sparking a panic that sends thousands of Illinois militia into the woods.
Frank Everett Stevens · biography
The story in one page
A Cyclopædia of Canadian Biography
A census of the lawyers, lumbermen, and lieutenants who built Canada into a nation at the dawn of the twentieth century.
Hector Willoughby Charlesworth · biography
The story in one page
Herman Melville, Mariner and Mystic
A merchant seaman survives cannibal islands and naval mutinies only to vanish into forty years of New York City obscurity.
Raymond M. Weaver · biography
The story in one page
The Journals of Lewis and Clark, 1804-1806
Two captains and a boat crew head west with trade beads, flannel shirts, and a very detailed diary habit.
Meriwether Lewis · collection
The story in one page
Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant
A bankrupt former president races a cancer diagnosis to recount how a reluctant soldier saved the American Union.
Ulysses S. Grant · biography
The story in one page
The Memoirs of Admiral Lord Beresford
A naval officer recounts fifty years of sea life, political friction, and fighting on the Nile.
Charles William De la Poer Beresford Baron Beresford · biography
The story in one page
Anarchism and Other Essays
The status quo is a machine; this collection suggests you check the oil or walk away.
Emma Goldman · collection
The story in one page
All in the Day's Work: An Autobiography
A journalist tracks oil barons, Lincoln, and peace activists, realizing history is rarely a straight line.
Ida M. Tarbell · biography
The story in one page
Fifty years in Wall Street
A banker watches the ticker for half a century and explains why money behaves so strangely.
Henry Clews · biography
The story in one page
My Bondage and My Freedom
Frederick Douglass survives a professional slave-breaker, learns to read in secret, and walks his own way to New York.
Frederick Douglass · biography
The story in one page
Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil
An observer of the human drama analyzes the invention of whiteness, the neglect of Africa, and the daily weight of segregation.
W. E. B. Du Bois · ideas
The story in one page
Famous Affinities of History: The Romance of Devotion. Vol 1-4
Two people meet, sparks fly or fizzle, and history files the bill.
Lyndon Orr · biography
The story in one page
The Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau
A man tries to explain himself to history, but history keeps interrupting with its own agenda.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau · biography
The story in one page
Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte
A secretary watches his former schoolmate conquer Europe, manage a mountain of paperwork, and eventually demand the furniture back.
Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne · biography
The story in one page
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater
A man takes laudanum for a toothache and discovers the darkest parts of his own imagination.
Thomas De Quincey · biography
The story in one page
Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman
A writer documents his wife's life, ignoring decorum to focus on her intellect and sudden passing.
William Godwin · biography
The story in one page
Lineage, Life and Labors of José Rizal, Philippine Patriot
A doctor, a writer, and a target: how one man agitated for reform in an occupied territory.
Austin Craig · biography
The story in one page
Memoirs of Louis XIV and His Court and of the Regency
The Duke of Saint-Simon watches the King, the court, and the cutlery with terrifying, unblinking focus.
Louis de Rouvroy duc de Saint-Simon · biography
In the library
Memoirs of the Court of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France
Mme. Campan · biography
The story in one page
Complete Prose Works
The man who sang America's songs records its hospital wards, its silver mines, and the specific way its larks sing.
Walt Whitman · ideas
The story in one page
The Jewish State
A journalist pitches a sovereign nation as a real estate and labor venture.
Theodor Herzl · biography

Story guides

The story in one page
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers
A catalog of Greek thinkers, covering their world-changing theories, their embarrassing habits, and the exact lists of every book they wrote.
Diogenes Laertius · biography
The story in one page
The Confessions of St. Augustine
A man seeks the divine while chasing every distraction in North Africa.
of Hippo Saint Augustine · Autobiographical philosophy
The story in one page
Boswell's Life of Johnson
A man follows his idol around London for twenty years taking notes. The idol survives.
James Boswell · biography
The story in one page
The Journals of Lewis and Clark, 1804-1806
Two captains and a boat crew head west with trade beads, flannel shirts, and a very detailed diary habit.
Meriwether Lewis · collection

The library

6,448 lives & letters

In the library
'Three Score Years and Ten'
Charlotte Ouisconsin Clark Van Cleve · biography
In the library
'Trusty and well beloved'
E. W. Hornung · biography
In the library
"Abe" Lincoln's Anecdotes and Stories
R. D. Wordsworth · biography
In the library
"Back from hell"
Samuel Cranston Benson · biography
In the library
"Billy" Sunday, the Man and His Message
William T. Ellis · biography
In the library
"Boots and Saddles"; Or, Life in Dakota with General Custer
Elizabeth Bacon Custer · biography
In the library
"Born of the Spirit;" or, Gems from the Book of Life
Zenas Osborne · biography
In the library
"Brother Bosch", an Airman's Escape from Germany
Gerald Featherstone Knight · biography
In the library
"Buffalo Bill" from Prairie to Palace: An Authentic History of the Wild West
John M. -1917 Burke · biography
In the library
"Co. Aytch," Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment
Samuel R. Watkins · biography
In the library
"Crumps", The Plain Story of a Canadian Who Went
Louis Keene · biography
In the library
"Father Clark," or The Pioneer Preacher
John Mason Peck · biography
In the library
"Great-Heart": The Life Story of Theodore Roosevelt
Daniel Henderson · biography
In the library
"Green Balls" : The Adventures of a Night-Bomber
Paul Bewsher · biography
In the library
"Holding the line"
Harold Baldwin · biography
In the library
"Honest Abe": A Study in Integrity Based on the Early Life of Abraham Lincoln
Alonzo Rothschild · biography
In the library
"Jesus Says So"
biography
In the library
"Let Us Have Peace"
Logan H. Roots · biography
In the library
"Monsieur Henri": A Foot-Note to French History
Louise Imogen Guiney · biography
In the library
"Morgan's Men," a Narrative of Personal Experiences
Henry Lane Stone · biography
In the library
"My beloved poilus"
Agnes Warner · biography
In the library
"My Visit to Tolstoy": Five Discourses
Joseph Krauskopf · biography
In the library
"Old Put" the patriot
Frederick A. Ober · biography
In the library
"Over the Top," by an American Soldier Who Went
Arthur Guy Empey · reference
In the library
"Phiz" (Hablot Knight Browne), a Memoir.
Frederic George Kitton · biography
In the library
"Prison Life in Andersonville"
John Levi Maile · biography
In the library
"Puffing Billy" and the Prize "Rocket"
Helen C. Knight · biography
In the library
"Shiloh" as Seen by a Private Soldier
Warren Olney · biography
In the library
"The spirit of '76": Some recollections of the artist and the painting
Henry Kelsey Devereux · biography
In the library
"The story of my life"
Egerton Ryerson · biography
In the library
"Their Majesties' Servants." Annals of the English Stage (Volume 2 of 3)
Dr. Doran · play
In the library
"Thirty Years In Hell" Or, "From Darkness to Light"
Bernard Fresenborg · biography
In the library
"We"
Charles A. Lindbergh · biography
In the library
100 New Yorkers of the 1970s
Max Millard · biography
In the library
13 Days: The Chronicle of an Escape from a German Prison
John Alan Lyde Caunter · biography
In the library
20 hrs., 40 min.
Amelia Earhart · biography
In the library
25
Beverley Nichols · biography
In the library
A "Y" Girl in France: Letters of Katherine Shortall
Katherine Shortall · biography
In the library
A Backward Glance at Eighty: Recollections & Comment
Charles A. Murdock · biography
In the library
A Ball Player's Career
Adrian C. Anson · biography
In the library
A Beacon for the Blind: Being a Life of Henry Fawcett, the Blind Postmaster-General
Winifred Holt · biography
In the library
A Belated Guest (from Literary Friends and Acquaintance)
William Dean Howells · biography
In the library
A Belle of the Fifties
Virginia Clay-Clopton · biography
In the library
A Biographical Dictionary of Freethinkers of All Ages and Nations
J. M. Wheeler · reference
In the library
A biographical memoir of the late Dr. Walter Oudney, Captain Hugh Clapperton, both of the Royal Navy, and Major Alex. Gordon Laing, all of whom died amid their active and enterprising endeavours to explore the interior of Africa
Thomas Nelson · biography
In the library
A Biographical Sketch of some of the Most Eminent Individuals which the Principality of Wales has produced since the Reformation
Robert Williams · biography
In the library
A Biographical Sketch of the Life and Character of Joseph Charless
Charlotte Taylor Blow Charless · biography
In the library
A Biography of Edmund Spenser
John W. Hales · biography