Originally published between 1909 and 1917 under the name "Harvard Classics," this stupendous 51-volume set-a collection of the greatest writings from literature, philosophy, history, and mythology-was assembled by American academic CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT (1834-1926), Harvard University's longest-serving president. Also known as "Dr. Eliot's Five Foot Shelf," it represented Eliot's belief that a basic liberal education could be gleaned by reading from an anthology of works that could fit on five feet of bookshelf.

Volume XLIII features the texts that are, quite literally, the foundational elements of the United States of America, from an account of the discovery of North America by Leif Ericsson and a letter from Christopher Columbus announcing his landing in the New World, to the Mayflower Compact and the Declaration of Independence, to Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and the treaty cementing the purchase of Alaska from Russia, to the 1904 convention between the U.S. and the Republic of Panama. Astonishing in their immediacy, these firsthand documents offer a condensed view of the political progress of the American people.