Every book we've made
Fourteen topics. Forty‑nine books.
Reading level
Showing all 14 topics · 49 books
Classic Literature
War and Peace
At her first ball, Natasha stands by the wall trying not to cry, until Pierre tells his friend Andrei to go and ask her to dance.
Plutarch
Pyrrhus & Marius
A Greek king whose wins cost so much that we still say “Pyrrhic victory,” and a Roman from a country town who was elected consul seven times.
Big Ideas
Cleopatra
Plutarch says her looks were not what made her unforgettable. It was her conversation, and she could speak to most visitors in their own language.
Plutarch
Demosthenes & Cicero
The most famous speakers of Greece and Rome, who each used words to fight for a free city, and each died for it.
Plutarch
Lycurgus & Numa
The lawgivers of Sparta and Rome. One built a city around war; the other taught a warlike city to keep the peace.
Classic Literature
Ulysses
The whole novel takes place on one ordinary day in Dublin, June 16, 1904, and readers still celebrate that date every year.
Plutarch
Theseus & Romulus
Theseus talked the scattered villages around Athens into becoming one city. Romulus filled his new city by welcoming anyone who had nowhere else to go.
Plutarch
Alexander & Caesar
Caesar once wept reading about Alexander: at the same age, Alexander had conquered much of the world, and Caesar had done nothing memorable yet.
Big Ideas
Marcus Aurelius
A Roman emperor kept a private notebook of reminders to be patient, fair and calm, and probably never meant anyone else to read it.
Big Ideas
Alfred the Great
A king hides in a swamp, burns a stranger's bread (so the legend goes), comes back to save his kingdom, and spends the peace on schools and books.
Big Ideas
Machiavelli
For centuries “Machiavellian” has meant sneaky and untrustworthy. The man behind the word served a republic, was jailed and tortured when it fell, and wrote a book in praise of republics.
Big Ideas
Stoicism
Epictetus's handbook opens by sorting the world into what we control and what we don't. Our toddler book asks the same question about a toppled block tower.
Classic Literature
Don Quixote
A man reads so many adventure stories that he sets out to become a knight, and fights windmills he thinks are giants.
Classic Literature
Beowulf
The only copy of Beowulf nearly burned in a library fire in 1731 and came through with its edges scorched.
Reading levels
Each topic comes as a set of books, one per age, with a Secret Nerd or Prep Book on some topics.
Toddler Book
One idea per spread and a line or two of text, made to be read aloud. 24 pages, 8.5 inches square, with a cut-paper collage illustration on every page.
Picture Book
The whole story in one read-aloud sitting, in words simple enough for a child to start following. 36 pages, 8.5 inches square, with a crayon illustration on every page.
Chapter Book
The full story in short chapters, read together at first and then alone. About 80 pages, 6 by 9 inches, with about 20 line illustrations and a note for parents on anything hard in the story.
Secret Nerd
A companion series for some topics, in short chapters. The famous person tells the nerdy side of their own story, like Alfred the Great’s candle clock, in a funny, invented first-person voice.
Prep Book
For the Plutarch pairs, a Greek life beside a Roman one. Weighs the two question by question and gets a reader ready for Plutarch’s own pages. 72 to 96 pages, 6 by 9 inches, illustrated in woodcut.