Find Your Next Read
Answer a few questions about the historical periods, subjects, and reading lengths you prefer. The finder will suggest books from the catalog that align with your interests.
Do more with this book catalog
The HICDE Modern History Library brings together 94 carefully selected public-domain works on the modern era. Here you can explore the great upheavals and quiet transformations that shaped nations and lives. The catalog is arranged into four areas: Modern Nations, World Events, Revolutions, and Social History.
Use the tools below to find books that match your interests, compare their lengths and styles, or estimate how much time you might spend reading them. Each tool draws on the catalog's own data, so you can browse with confidence and pick a work that fits your reading habits.
94
books in this catalog
4
catalog categories
94
books with reading-time data
Made for this collection
Ways the catalog data becomes useful
Compare Books Side by Side
See how books differ in page count, reading time, sentence complexity, and more. This helps you choose between similar titles or plan your reading list.
Estimate Reading Time
Get a clear estimate of how long a book will take to read, based on word counts and average reading speeds. Useful for planning your next historical deep dive.
The HICDE Modern History Library: Three Tools, One Reading Path
A library of 94 modern history titles can feel like a long corridor of doors. The Book Finder, Compare Books and Reading Tracker are the three practical instruments on this site, and each answers a different question. The Finder narrows the field; Compare sets two or three candidates side by side; the Tracker turns a chosen book into a sustainable daily habit. Used in sequence, they move you from a vague interest to a finished volume.
Start with a question, not a title
Before opening the Finder, decide what kind of history you want. The catalog is organized into four categories: Modern Nations, World Events, Social History and Revolutions. If you are drawn to a specific region or era, the category filter will immediately cut the list by roughly half. For a Civil War example, the Modern Nations category holds 37 titles, including The Struggle for Missouri — Text and Context, a 100,668-word study of the state's divided loyalties.
The Finder also lets you weigh word count, estimated reading time, chapter rhythm and sentence flow. A reader with limited evenings might filter for 'quick' or 'steady' reading times, while someone preparing for a long winter could embrace an 'epic' work. The goal is to match the book's demands to your available attention, not to judge which length is better.
Compare before you commit
Once the Finder has produced two or three plausible titles, Compare Books becomes useful. It places word count, estimated reading time, text sections, sentence flow and chapter rhythm in adjacent columns. The differences are often more revealing than the raw numbers. A book with 15 text sections and a 438-minute estimate, such as The Struggle for Missouri — Text and Context, will feel like a series of extended chapters, while a 7-section work of similar length might demand longer, more continuous reading sessions.
Sentence flow, measured as average words per sentence, is a descriptive metric, not a quality score. A title like Some War-time Lessons, with its 29.3 average, may require more careful parsing than one with a shorter average. Comparing these metrics across candidates helps you anticipate the texture of the prose before you read a single page.
Track the pages you actually read
After selection, the Reading Tracker takes over. It records progress in pages, not minutes or sections, and it lets you set a daily page goal. If the catalog lacks a fixed page count, the tracker estimates one by dividing the word count by 250 words per page. You can override that estimate with the page total from your own edition, which is useful for books with unusual formatting.
The tracker's estimated finish date is a simple calculation: remaining pages divided by your daily goal. For a 438-minute read like The Struggle for Missouri, a steady 20-page daily goal turns a daunting project into a manageable calendar. The three tools work best in this order: find, compare, then track.