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most popular documents
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Code of Justinian
On November 16, 534, Justinian I, the ruler of the Eastern Roman (or Byzantine) Empire, issued his Corpus Juris Civilis (Body of Civil Law), commonly called the Code of Justinian. It expanded on...
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Qur’an (Koran)
The birth of Islam, the youngest of the three Abrahamic religions, began in 610 with the revelation of the Qur'an (also spelled Koran) to Muhammad in a cave outside the Arabian city of Mecca. Driven...
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George Washington: First Inaugural Address
George Washington delivered his First Inaugural Address on April 30, 1789, to a joint session of Congress in the Senate chambers in New York City’s Federal Hall. Believing that he would be elected...
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Bernal Díaz: The True History of the Conquest of New Spain
Hernán Cortés was a Spanish naval commander and explorer, sent to the Americas as a conquistador, a conqueror in service to the Spanish Empire. In 1519 Cortés and his soldiers landed on the Yucatán...
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‘Abd-al-Qadir Bada’uni: Chronicles
The Selection of Chronicles of the Indo-Persian historian ‘Abd-al-Qadir Bada’uni (1540-1605) is a three-volume history of the Mughal Empire. The work begins with the sultan Babur and ends around...
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Muhammad Bakhtáwar Khan: On the Emperor Aurangzeb
Muhammad Bakhtáwar Khán (c. 1620-1685) was a eunuch scholar in the court of Emperor Aurangzeb (1618-1707) of the Mughal Indian Empire. His multivolume Mir-át-I ’A’lam (from which this excerpt is...
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Bartolomé de las Casas: A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies
Bartolomé de las Casas (1484-1566) went to the New World in 1502 at the age of eighteen. He became a land trustee (encomendero) and, like many of his peers, participated in raids to capture new...
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Requerimiento
The Requerimiento—a Spanish word meaning “requirement” or “demand”—was a document that was read aloud by the Spanish conquistadores of the early sixteenth century to native peoples in the Americas,...
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Christopher Columbus: Letter to Raphael Sanxis on the Discovery of America
Christopher Columbus’s Letter to Raphael Sanxis on the Discovery of America, written in March 1493, after the explorer had returned to Europe, reports what he had found in the New World. Columbus, a...
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Jonathan Edwards: “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”
On July 8, 1741, at Enfield, Connecticut, Jonathan Edwards, pastor of the Reformed Church in Northampton, Massachusetts, delivered what is perhaps his most famous sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” The...
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Che Guevara: “Guerrilla Warfare: A Method”
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Cao Xueqin and Gao E: The Story of the Stone
The Story of the Stone, China's most famous novel, is one of the world's longest literary works. The Chinese text is about fifteen hundred pages long, divided into 120 chapters. David Hawkes's English translation, from...
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Bible: Letter of Paul to the Galatians
The apostle Paul wrote his Letter to the Galatians either just before or just after the Jerusalem Council (49 CE), the pivotal event in the missionary expansion of Christianity to the Gentiles (non-Jews). Prior to the...
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Marcus Aurelius: Meditations
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, author of the Meditations, was emperor of Rome from 161 to 180
ce , reigning over the end of that period of Roman rule known as the Pax Romana. Adopted by the emperor Antoninus Pius, he was... -
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola: Oration on the Dignity of Man
Considered the “Manifesto of the Renaissance,” Giovanni Pico della Mirandola's Oration on the Dignity of Man (1486) is a defining text in Renaissance humanism and the syncretism that characterized it. Serving as both a...
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Henry I: Charter of Liberties
The Charter of Liberties, also called the Coronation Charter, was issued by King Henry I in 1100, shortly after his ascension to the throne of England. The Charter of Liberties was important because it bound the king to...
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George Whitefield: “The Great Duty of Family-Religion”
“The Great Duty of Family-Religion” was a sermon preached by the British-born clergyman George Whitefield at various times and in various locations in the 1730s before it was published in a collection of his sermons in...
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Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: Fourth Assessment Report on Climate Change
In 2007 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued its Fourth Assessment Report on Climate Change, which for many people confirmed the reality of climate change. The Fourth Assessment Report on Climate...
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Executive Order 11246: Equal Employment Opportunity
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Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward
The U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward on February 2, 1819. The majority opinion was written by Chief Justice John Marshall. At issue was the contract clause in article...
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Fletcher v. Peck
On March 16, 1810, Chief Justice John Marshall, writing for a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court, delivered the Court’s decision in Fletcher v. Peck. Fletcher v. Peck was a landmark case for at least three reasons. One was...
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Sun Tzu: The Art of War
One of the great military texts from ancient China is The Art of War, believed to have been written in the sixth century BCE by Sun Tzu. The book, consisting of thirteen chapters, is still regarded by military planners...
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Constitution of Rwanda
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Plato: “Of Wealth, Justice, Moderation, and Their Opposites”
In the first book of the Republic (ca. 380 BCE), the Greek philosopher Plato attempts to establish the nature of justice. This task is a keystone of all Plato's philosophy, which endeavors to answer the question “How...
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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: The Sorrows of Young Werther
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's 1774 novel The Sorrows of Young Werther, a tragedy of unbridled emotion, is about the rise of the bourgeois class and of youth culture. Its plot is supposedly based on experiences had by...
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Maximilien Robespierre: “On the Moral and Political Principles of Domestic Policy”
The Jacobin French politician Maximilien Robespierre (1758–1794) came to dominate the National Convention (the French governing body) during the period of 1793–1794. The Jacobins were a political club established in...
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Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan
Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) was a hugely influential and controversial philosopher and political theorist. His Leviathan (1651) is frequently deemed to be the greatest work of political theory written in the English...
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Bible: 1 Samuel
The biblical book 1 Samuel (8–12) contains the memories of how kingship emerged in ancient Israel with Saul. These chapters also contain some of the most abrasive criticism of kingship to be found in the Bible. As...
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William H. Whyte: The Organization Man
William Hollingsworth Whyte (1917–1999) was a student of urban society, an interest he cultivated while working with such organizations as the New York City Planning Commission. In 1956 he published his most famous...
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George H. W. Bush: “Read My Lips” Speech
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Oliver Cromwell: Speech at the Opening of the Protectorate Parliament
In his Speech at the Opening of the Protectorate Parliament, Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658) took the traditional role of the monarch.Cromwell, a successful general in the English Civil War of the 1640s, had in effect...
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Rudyard Kipling: “The White Man's Burden”
“The White Man’s Burden” was written by the British author Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) in 1899 and published in McClure's Magazine with the subtitle “The United States and the Philippine Islands.” Kipling wrote the...
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Zheng He: Inscription to the Goddess the Celestial Spouse
The Inscription to the Goddess the Celestial Spouse is one of several inscriptions left by Zheng He, the Muslim eunuch admiral who commanded the fabled Ming treasure fleets between 1405 and 1433. A devoted servant to...
