Free History Books Online

Introduction

This is a listing of sites that legally offer free books on History, for reading and listening (audio).

All of these sites listed have content that is legal for them to distribute.  If you find that any site listed is offering content that can not be legally transferred, please let me know in the comments below. 

This list is not comprehensive and if you know of any other sites please post in the comments below or at our forums. 

A comprehensive alphabetical listing of free books for reading or listening can be found on these pages:

• 446 Places For Free Books Online
• 91 Places for Free Audio Books Online

There will be other books on History at the sites listed there, but they are not categorized at the sites.

Libraries are also an excellent source for reading and listening materials regarding history.  To find out more information on your local library, the links here may help:  Library Information

There are 16 other book  pages here at Gizmo's covering other various popular book genres and offering links to free online books listed here:  Book Genre Pages

History

2020k (History)  Large collection of links.  Available in varying formats.

AcrobatPlanet has 11 unique historical works for free download in PDF.

Arthur's Classic Novels (History)  Interesting collection available for online viewing.

BookYards (History)  Over a thousand books available for download in PDF.

Bored.com (History) has 2035 books available for online viewing.  Separated into countries and world history categories and then searchable by title. 

ChestofBooks (History)  3 unusual books for online reading.

ClassicHistoryBooks offers 6 unique works for online viewing.

Classicly I have not figured out how to show a complete listing of the books here.  If you scroll over book names in the introcutory paragraph, you will find links to a number of free classic novels.  The free book listing only contains 4 works.  In any event, there are about 10 classic historical novels available for download in PDF or KINDLE.  Thanks to Tyler G for this suggestion.

DailyLit offers 31 historical works for free.

DigiLibraries has over 1000 free historical novels available.  This is a mix of classic and modern (unpublished authors) works.  All the ones I checked were available for download in ePub or for reading online.  Some also offered PDF downloads.  Thanks to Jonathan Malka for this suggestion.

eBooksDirectory has 152 free historical novels in 8 categories.  These are links off site, so download and viewing options vary.

ElegantSolutions has an interesting collection of close to 100 free historical books.  All are available for free download in LIT (Microsoft Reader).  Most are classic works, but there are a few modern works mixed in.

ePubBooks has a small collection of free classic historical (non-fiction) novels.  All are available for download in ePUB.  There are links to other download formats, but some of those are pay sites.  They also have a historical fiction section, which contains a larger selection of free novels.

FeedBooks  offers 42 free ebooks in their Public Domain (History) category as well as 2 additional free ebooks in their Original Books (History) collections. 

FreeBook-co-UK has 7 free historical ebooks.

FreeeBooks.net (History)  11 books available for download in pdf.

FreeOnlineBookstore has about 40 free books available for download in pdf, in 5 categories: American, British, African, World and Asian history.

GenealogySearch  offers historical and genealogy books from around the world.

GetFreeEBooks has 34 unique entries in its history category.  These are unique entries not found elsewhere.  The download and viewing options vary.

Globusz (History)  12 books available for online viewing or download

GoogleBookSearch (History)  811 books available for online viewing.

InternationalWorldHistoryProject has a very good size collection of free historical novels for download.  Some of the downloads are in EXE.  I usually shy away from such offerings, but I checked these and they are clean.  They also offer some works that require the TK3 reader, which I have previously checked as clean.  Further down the page are a good number of PDF downloads.

LiteratureMaster has 583 books in its History category available for online viewing.

ManyBooks (History)  3403 books available for download in a variety of formats

MemoWare (History)  1122 works available for download in a variety of formats

Munsey's (History) 1437 books available for download in a large variety of formats.

Munsey'sMobi (History) A huge collection of free classic historical novels.  These appear to be different entries thatn the main Munsey's site above.  They offer HTM and XML as well as download in PDF, PRC.  The vast majority also offer ePUB download.

OnlineBooksPage has a large collection of links to online resources for free history books.  Scroll down to choose from categories.

OnlineBooks4Free (History)  106 books available for online viewing or download

Online Library of Liberty (History) over a hundred works available for online viewing or download in pdf or ebooks pdf.

PennsylvaniaOnlineHistoryBooks provides links to online books regarding the history of Pennsylvania.

PublicBookShelf (History)  6 books available for online viewing.

TheHistoricalArchive has the two volume work, Stories of the Civil War, available for download or viewing in PDF.  This is mostly a pay site and this is the only free entry for now.  The free offering does change from time to time and there is no registration required to obtain this free offer.

Web-Books has 63 classic historical novels available in its history category.  These are all available to read free online or for download in WEB and WEB database.  Viewing the downloads requires their Web Viewer (free) which is clean as far as I can tell

WorldWideSchool  has 210 novels in its History category, which is nicely divided into many sub-categories, available for online viewing.

History (audio)

BooksShouldBeFree has 56 free audio books in its History category available for download in very good quality MP3 or as text for reading.

Classicly I have not figured out how to show a complete listing of the books here.  If you scroll over book names in the introcutory paragraph, you will find links to a number of free classic novels as audiobooks.  The audiobook collection appears to be larger than the ebooks collection above.  Unfortunately, many of those links in the introduction are to the wrong books.  If you copy the title and author from that intro to the search box above, you will get links to the proper books available for free download as MP3.  A very nice audio collection of history books, but slightly diminished by the poor presentation.

ejunto has a small, but interesting, collection of free History, Science and Philosophy audio books available for download in good quality MP3.

FreeAudio small collection of free audio books, mostly USA historical/political, with a couple of unusual entries.  They are available for download in MP3.

LearnOutLoud has 634 audio works under its History category, which is also sub-categorized. They are available in different ways, including online listening, MP3 or MP4 as many link to other sites.

LibriVox has 398 free audio books under its History genre available for download in MP3 (64kb/128kb) or ogg vorbis.  All are human read.

OpenCulture has about 30 free audio books under its History category available for free download in good quality MP3 or iTunes compatible.  Some are available for direct download, but most link to other sites for download.

PodioBooks has Great Moments in history available for download in very good quality MP3. They have now added 3 works from the Christian Holliness Collection and a work that looks at the history of TV from a Christian perspective.