The classics, in the English you already speak.

Twenty-eight public-domain works of philosophy, politics, economics, and science, each rewritten sentence by sentence into clear modern prose. Nothing is summarized or cut. Read them here, or take the EPUB with you. Free, without an account.

28 editions 2,130,000 words Open source

Browse the library How an edition is made

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Three short, complete works that repay a first evening.

  1. Cover art for the modernized 'Meditations' featuring a stylized portrait of Marcus Aurelius, abstract symbols of Stoic resilience (like a modern rock in waves or geometric patterns representing reason), or cosmic/natural elements.

    Meditations

    Marcus Aurelius AD 180 11 h 28 min

    A Roman emperor’s private notes on keeping your head. The best first classic there is.

  2. Cover art for The Prince featuring a minimalist Renaissance-inspired silhouette of a ruler in profile, with subtle shadowed geometry suggesting power, intrigue, and political strategy, in a restrained palette of deep green, black, and warm parchment tones.

    The Prince

    Niccolò Machiavelli 1532 1 h 41 min

    Machiavelli on power, without flinching. Five hundred years old and still uncomfortable.

  3. Cover art for The Art of War featuring Sun Tzu or thematic imagery representing ancient Chinese warfare and strategy

    The Art of War

    Sun Tzu 1910 2 h 16 min

    Sun Tzu’s short, exact manual on strategy, read by generals and founders alike.

The shelf

Every edition, grouped by the question it answers. Search and filter the library for the full list.

A note on the text

Each edition starts from a public-domain source. A pipeline cuts the work into passages, rewrites every passage into modern English with a language model, and then checks each rewrite against its source for dropped content, changed meaning, summarizing, and stray commentary. Passages that fail are revised and checked again; those that still fail are never published.

The result is a complete modern reading of the whole work, not an abridgement. It is also machine prose reviewed by a machine, so treat it as a way in, and quote the original when it matters. The pipeline, prompts, and site are open source; the colophon explains the method in full.