Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

Purchase one of 1st World Library's Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. Visit us online at www.1stWorldLibrary.ORG - - Mr. Jones, of the Manor Farm, had locked the henhouses for the night, but was too drunk to remember to shut the pop-holes. With the ring of light from his lantern dancing from side to side, he lurched across the yard, kicked off his boots at the... (more)

1984

by George Orwell

George Orwell's prophetic, nightmarish vision of "Negative Utopia" is timelier than ever-and its warnings more powerful.

The Audacity of Hope

Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream

by Barack Obama

“A government that truly represents these Americans–that truly serves these Americans–will require a different kind of politics. That politics will need to reflect our lives as they are actually lived. It won’t be pre-packaged, ready to pull off the shelf. It will have to be constructed from the best of our traditions and will have to account for the darker aspects of our past. We will need to understand just how... (more)

Brave New World

by Aldous Huxley

"Community, Identity, Stability" is the motto of Aldous Huxley's utopian World State. Here everyone consumes daily grams of soma, to fight depression, babies are born in laboratories, and the most popular form of entertainment is a "Feelie," a movie that stimulates the senses of sight, hearing, and touch. Though there is no violence and everyone is provided for, Bernard Marx feels something is missing and senses... (more)

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Presents America (The Book) Teacher's Edition: A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Presents America (The Book) Teacher's Edition: A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction

by Jon Stewart, Ben Karlin, David Javerbaum

Jon Stewart, host of the Emmy and Peabody Award-winning The Daily Show, and his coterie of patriots, deliver a hilarious look at American government. American-style democracy is the world's most beloved form of government, which explains why so many other nations are eager for us to impose it on them. But what is American democracy? In AMERICA (THE BOOK), Jon Stewart and The Daily Show writing staff offer... (more)

Machiavelli's The Prince

by Niccolo Machiavelli

Rufus Goodwin has made a new translation into modern English of Machiavelli's masterpiece, The Prince. Machiavelli, father of Social Sciences, continues to have relevance in our modern world, and his observations on the nature of human being and the political systems are as new today as they were during the Renaissance. In the Introduction, the adjective "Machiavellian" is analyzed.

Fahrenheit 451

A Novel

by Ray Bradbury

Nowadays firemen start fires. Fireman Guy Montag loves to rush to a fire and watch books burn up. Then he met a seventeen-year old girl who told him of a past when people were not afraid, and a professor who told him of a future where people could think. And Guy Montag knew what he had to do....

Dreams from My Father

A Story of Race and Inheritance

by Barack Obama

Nine years before the Senate campaign that made him one of the most influential and compelling voices in American politics, Barack Obama published this lyrical, unsentimental, and powerfully affecting memoir, which became a #1 New York Times bestseller when it was reissued in 2004. Dreams from My Father tells the story of Obama’s struggle to understand the forces that shaped him as the son of a black African... (more)

Atlas Shrugged

by Ayn Rand

At last, Ayn Rand's masterpiece is available to her millions of loyal readers in trade paperback. With this acclaimed work and its immortal query, "Who is John Galt?", Ayn Rand found the perfect artistic form to express her vision of existence. Atlas Shrugged made Rand not only one of the most popular novelists of the century, but one of its most influential thinkers. Atlas Shrugged is the astounding... (more)

I Am America (And So Can You!)

by Stephen Colbert, Michael C. Brumm

Congratulations--just by looking at this webpage, you became 25% more patriotic. From Stephen Colbert, the host of television's highest-rated punditry show The Colbert Report , comes the book to fill the other 23¿ hours of your day. I Am America (And So Can You!) contains all of the opinions that Stephen doesn't have time to shoehorn into his nightly broadcast. Dictated directly into a microcassette recorder... (more)

Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right

Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right

by Al Franken

Al Franken, one of our "savviest satirists" ( People ), has been studying the rhetoric of the Right. He has listened to their cries of "slander," "bias," and even "treason." He has examined the Bush administration’s policies of squandering our surplus, ravaging the environment, and alienating the rest of the world. He’s even watched Fox News. A lot. And, in this fair and balanced report, Al bravely and... (more)

The World Is Flat

A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century

by Thomas L. Friedman

When scholars write the history of the world twenty years from now, and they come to the chapter "Y2K to March 2004," what will they say was the most crucial development? The attacks on the World Trade Center on 9/11 and the Iraq war? Or the convergence of technology and events that allowed India, China, and so many other countries to become part of the global supply chain for services and manufacturing, creating... (more)

Stupid White Men

And Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation!

by Michael Moore

In the winter of 2002, Stupid White Men took America -- and the world -- by storm. Tired and skeptical of George W. Bush's high approval ating, frightened by the implications of the Enron scandal -- and generally just looking for a voice of honest dissent in the thick atmosphere of jingoism that followed 9/11 -- book buyers from coast to coast swiftly embraced Michael Moore's in-your-face anti-Bush-era... (more)

The Handmaid's Tale

by Margaret Atwood

In the world of the near future, who will control women's bodies? Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. She may leave the home of the Commander and his wife once a day to walk to food markets whose signs are now pictures instead of words because women are no longer allowed to read. She must lie on her back once a month and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, because in an age of declining births,... (more)

Deception Point

by Dan Brown

A shocking scientific discovery. A conspiracy of staggering brilliance. A thriller unlike any you've ever read.... When a NASA satellite discovers an astonishingly rare object buried deep in the Arctic ice, the floundering space agency proclaims a much-needed victory -- a victory with profound implications for NASA policy and the impending presidential election. To verify the authenticity of the find, the White... (more)

The Communist Manifesto

by Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx

Originally published on the eve of the 1848 European revolutions, The Communist Manifesto is a condensed and incisive account of the worldview Marx and Engels developed during their hectic intellectual and political collaboration. Formulating the principles of dialectical materialism, they believed that labor creates wealth, hence capitalism is exploitive and antithetical to freedom. This new edition... (more)

Three Cups of Tea

One Man's Mission to Fight Terrorism and Build Nations... One School at a Time

by Greg Mortenson, David Oliver Relin

The astonishing, uplifting story of a real-life Indiana Jones and his humanitarian campaign to use education to combat terrorism in the Taliban’s backyard Anyone who despairs of the individual’s power to change lives has to read the story of Greg Mortenson, a homeless mountaineer who, following a 1993 climb of Pakistan’s treacherous K2, was inspired by a chance encounter with impoverished mountain villagers and... (more)

Wicked

The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

by Gregory Maguire

When Dorothy triumphed over the Wicked Witch of the West in L. Frank Baum's classic tale, we heard only her side of the story. But what about her arch-nemesis, the mysterious witch? Where did she come from? How did she become so wicked? And what is the true nature of evil? Gregory Maguire creates a fantasy world so rich and vivid that we will never look at Oz the same way again. Wicked is about a land where... (more)

Watchmen

by Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons

This Hugo Award-winning graphic novel chronicles the fall from grace of a group of super-heroes plagued by all-too-human failings. Along the way, the concept of the super-hero is dissected as the heroes are stalked by an unknown assassin. One of the most influential graphic novels of all time and a perennial bestseller, WATCHMEN has been studied on college campuses across the nation and is considered a gateway... (more)

Persepolis : The Story of a Childhood

by Marjane Satrapi

A New York Times Notable Book A Time Magazine “Best Comix of the Year” A San Francisco Chronicle and Los Angeles Times Best-seller Wise, funny, and heartbreaking, Persepolis is Marjane Satrapi’s memoir of growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. In powerful black-and-white comic strip images, Satrapi tells the story of her life in Tehran from ages six to fourteen, years that saw the overthrow... (more)

Shelfari Book Activity

Browse Subjects: politics

Top Books

by George Orwell

by George Orwell

Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream

by Barack Obama

by Aldous Huxley

by Jon Stewart, Ben Karlin, David Javerbaum

by Niccolo Machiavelli

A Novel

by Ray Bradbury

A Story of Race and Inheritance

by Barack Obama

by Ayn Rand

by Stephen Colbert, Michael C. Brumm

by Al Franken

A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century

by Thomas L. Friedman

And Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation!

by Michael Moore

by Margaret Atwood

by Dan Brown

by Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx

One Man's Mission to Fight Terrorism and Build Nations... One School at a Time

by Greg Mortenson, David Oliver Relin

The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

by Gregory Maguire

by Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons

by Marjane Satrapi