Paul Gauguin, "Nave Moe." Click picture to see it full size in a new window. You can also click here or in the empty space just above the painting to make it snap to the top of the page.

Via Nicolas Pioch"s outstanding The Web Museum, which has some very high quality and resolution images from some great artists.

This online library is an independent project by Mike Presky. There are about 30 complete ebooks here. An eclectic collection from various places and periods. About 5000 separate web pages in total, each in what is effectively its own site. They vary in size. Some have hundreds of pages. Herodotus, with 1500 pages, is the biggest.

There is also a collection of shorter, one-page selections in the world history, another separate site. My comments on these and on current events are on my weblog, which also serves as the library home page. If you're a classic Mac fan, these texts all began as Hypercard stacks, which still work and which you can download below.

These are the complete works, each in its own site, usually each chapter on a separate web page.


The Asian and Mideast Library

Shu Ching.

Confucius.

Mencius.

Great Learning.

Tao Te Ching.

Chuang Tzu.

Life of Buddha.

Bhagavad Gita.

Koran.

Rubaiyat.


The European Library

Homer. The Iliad.

Homer. The Odyssey.

Hesiod. Works and Days.

Herodotus. The Histories.

Plato. The Republic.

Tacitus. Selections.

Einhard. Charlemagne.

Chaucer. Canterbury Tales.

Locke. Second Treatise on Government.

Descartes. Discourse on the Method.

Carroll. Alice in Wonderland.


The American Library

US Constitution.

Federalist Papers.

Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin.

Tom Paine. Common Sense.

Life of Frederick Douglass.

Washington. Up From Slavery.

Mark Twain. Tom Sawyer.

Mark Twain. Huckleberry Finn.

Thoreau. Walden.

The same ebooks in Hypercard format for the classic Mac environment.

These ebooks began as Hypercard stacks about ten years ago. So I thought I'd put the old files up for downloading, in case anyone was interested. It not only still works under the latest systems, it works considerably faster and better than it ever did.

This program received a five-star review from MacUser back in 1996. "Absolutely brilliant interface design" they said. For what it's worth. Extensive use of the fonts, speech, colors and other features of the classic Mac OS. It runs perfectly under OSX. Almost unbelievably so.

"Solo format" means it requires Hypercard or one of the players; "Extended format" means it requires Extended Seven as well. "Standalone" means it is an independent Macintosh application, requiring nothing else. These standalones are much bigger files since they contain the entire HC program. The others are fairly small.

Note: This is old Classic Macintosh stuff, Hypercard-based and Mac only. It will not run on Windows, Linux or any other operating system, so don't waste your time downloading. Read the online books if you have one of those systems.

The ebooks should run on any Mac with at least 4 MB of RAM, even the oldest ones. Under Systems 7, 8, 9 or X. Although of course some features, such as speech and color, may not be available on some of the older models.