Ye Olde Books
Ye Olde books, they sure are great, especially if they are free.
So, you like reading or you would like to start reading, especially about what our ancestors had to say about liberty, politics, society, and economy during their times. You would be surprised how little has changed. But, I'm not here to talk about those topics, or the books about them (I'll do it later on though), what I'll do is to try and put you in track so you can know where to find them and enlighten your life.
Now, when I say free, I mean public domain books (books that no longer have copyrights). I've been reading quite a few public domain books about liberty, politics, society, and economics from many sources, but mainly from the Amazon Kindle store. Also, I have listened to a few, like The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith......@.@ "CORN!"🌽
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Internet Archive
You can find a plethora of books and documents in there, and one neat feature they have is the option to convert the documents in portable formats like PDF, MOBI, TXT, etc. Although the result might vary. I recommend PDF.
They also do recommendations at the bottom of the page, and you may find "other" books in there.
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Amazon Kindle
Yeah, I know, the book purger, but bear with me, there is a big selection on public domain books for free (or .99 cents) and quite good features within the Kindle application and devices to make it worthwhile. This is not a review.
The Kindle application is free, you can download it on Android or IOS, or use one of their E-Reader devices ( I recommend those, I have one, it's easy on the eyes). Beyond the fact that the books don't occupy any space whatsoever, within the application you can increase the font size for reading comfort, you can search for words definition on the spot (no internet required). The feature that is the best here, is the ability to highlight text and note taking. But wait there's more! You can access your notes online, edit them and print them or share them, PDF format of course ;D.
Give it a try, it might work for you.
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"But Libertatem, I can barely concentrate to the red light of an intersection, least read a book."
Don't worry, I got you covered.....
LibriVox: free public domain audiobooks
Yes, you can even listen to the books, if they are available of course. Just a note here, they are all read by volunteers, so don't nag about quality, be grateful there are people that want to keep the old knowledge alive.
You can download the books in MP3 format per chapter or the whole thing and listen to them on your favorite device.
What's that?
You are a cheap bastard that doesn't want to spend a few Megas of space of your device!?
Well, Scrooge, still got you covered...
YouTube
You can search youtube for the book you want to listen to and there's a really good chance it will be available (have never let me down), downside of this is you have to keep your screen on, at least on your mobile device. Many LibriVox books can be found there under audiobooksfree profile, but a simple search should do the job.
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Now that I have covered a few sources where you can obtain or listen to free domain books, what remains is which books to look for. Well, what are you interested in? The first book I read in regards to the topic of liberty was On Liberty by John Stuart Mill and from it, I moved to The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (if you like corn you'll like the book, probably), and so on. Sometimes I looked into the recommendations given in the web pages.
Still, let me give you some advice, in our current social/political/economic state it's hard to discern what is true and what is not, everything is too mixed up, so go back 100+ years in time, to the time when thinkers truly spoke their minds freely, and the basic fundamentals where established. Look for books published before 1920 or their authors lived through that time.
The following link has a list of books I believe is worth looking into:
https://www.listchallenges.com/philosophy-politics-economics-and-history
Lastly, I want to invite you to read a book I consider quite interesting and with many great points.
Eugenics and Other Evils By G. K. Chesterton
Do you have any other recommendations for obtaining older books? Have you tried reading some of these books? Please comment and lets the conversation begin.
Addendum: Extra Sources
The Gutenberg Project, contributed by @Avielle