Humanities Textbooks

Exploring Movie Construction & Production: What’s so exciting about movies?

Contributor: Reich

Publisher: Open SUNY

License: CC BY-NC-SA

Exploring Movie Construction & Production contains eight chapters of the major areas of film construction and production. The discussion covers theme, genre, narrative structure, character portrayal, story, plot, directing style, cinematography, and editing. Important terminology is defined and types of analysis are discussed and demonstrated. An extended example of how a movie description reflects the setting, narrative structure, or directing style is used throughout the book to illustrate building blocks of each theme. This approach to film instruction and analysis has proved beneficial to increasing students' learning, while enhancing the creativity and critical thinking of the student.

(15 reviews)

The Word on College Reading and Writing

Contributors: Babin, Burnell, Pesznecker, Rosevear, and Wood

Publisher: Open Oregon Educational Resources

License: CC BY-NC

Written by five college reading and writing instructors, this interactive, multimedia text draws from decades of experience teaching students who are entering the college reading and writing environment for the very first time. It includes examples, exercises, and definitions for just about every reading- and writing-related topic students will encounter in their college courses.

(34 reviews)

Ethics for A-Level

Contributors: Dimmock and Fisher

Publisher: Open Book Publishers

License: CC BY

What does pleasure have to do with morality? What role, if any, should intuition have in the formation of moral theory? If something is ‘simulated', can it be immoral?

(5 reviews)

Ovid, Metamorphoses, 3.511-733. Latin Text with Commentary

Contributors: Gildenhard and Zissos

Publisher: Open Book Publishers

License: CC BY

This extract from Ovid's 'Theban History' recounts the confrontation of Pentheus, king of Thebes, with his divine cousin, Bacchus, the god of wine. Notwithstanding the warnings of the seer Tiresias and the cautionary tale of a character Acoetes (perhaps Bacchus in disguise), who tells of how the god once transformed a group of blasphemous sailors into dolphins, Pentheus refuses to acknowledge the divinity of Bacchus or allow his worship at Thebes. Enraged, yet curious to witness the orgiastic rites of the nascent cult, Pentheus conceals himself in a grove on Mt. Cithaeron near the locus of the ceremonies. But in the course of the rites he is spotted by the female participants who rush upon him in a delusional frenzy, his mother and sisters in the vanguard, and tear him limb from limb.

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(0 reviews)

Ovid, Amores (Book 1)

Contributor: Turpin

Publisher: Open Book Publishers

License: CC BY

From Catullus to Horace, the tradition of Latin erotic poetry produced works of literature which are still read throughout the world. Ovid's Amores, written in the first century BC, is arguably the best-known and most popular collection in this tradition.

(1 review)

Cornelius Nepos, 'Life of Hannibal': Latin Text, Notes, Maps, Illustrations and Vocabulary

Contributor: Mulligan

Publisher: Open Book Publishers

License: CC BY

Trebia. Trasimene. Cannae. With three stunning victories, Hannibal humbled Rome and nearly shattered its empire. Even today Hannibal's brilliant, if ultimately unsuccessful, campaign against Rome during the Second Punic War (218-202 BC) make him one of history's most celebrated military leaders. This biography by Cornelius Nepos (c. 100-27 BC) sketches Hannibal's life from the time he began traveling with his father's army as a young boy, through his sixteen-year invasion of Italy and his tumultuous political career in Carthage, to his perilous exile and eventual suicide in the East.

(2 reviews)

Cicero, On Pompey’s Command (De Imperio), 27-49. Latin Text, Study Aids with Vocabulary, Commentary, and Translation

Contributors: Gildenhard and Hodgson

Publisher: Open Book Publishers

License: CC BY

In republican times, one of Rome's deadliest enemies was King Mithridates of Pontus. In 66 BCE, after decades of inconclusive struggle, the tribune Manilius proposed a bill that would give supreme command in the war against Mithridates to Pompey the Great, who had just swept the Mediterranean clean of another menace: the pirates. While powerful aristocrats objected to the proposal, which would endow Pompey with unprecedented powers, the bill proved hugely popular among the people, and one of the praetors, Marcus Tullius Cicero, also hastened to lend it his support. In his first ever political speech, variously entitled pro lege Manilia or de imperio Gnaei Pompei, Cicero argues that the war against Mithridates requires the appointment of a perfect general and that the only man to live up to such lofty standards is Pompey. In the section under consideration here, Cicero defines the most important hallmarks of the ideal military commander and tries to demonstrate that Pompey is his living embodiment.

(1 review)

Tacitus, Annals, 15.20-23, 33-45. Latin Text, Study Aids with Vocabulary, and Commentary

Contributors: Owen and Gildenhard

Publisher: Open Book Publishers

License: CC BY

The emperor Nero is etched into the Western imagination as one of ancient Rome's most infamous villains, and Tacitus' Annals have played a central role in shaping the mainstream historiographical understanding of this flamboyant autocrat.

(1 review)

A Concise Introduction to Logic

Contributor: DeLancey

Publisher: Open SUNY

License: CC BY-NC-SA

A Concise Introduction to Logic is an introduction to formal logic suitable for undergraduates taking a general education course in logic or critical thinking, and is accessible and useful to any interested in gaining a basic understanding of logic. This text takes the unique approach of teaching logic through intellectual history; the author uses examples from important and celebrated arguments in philosophy to illustrate logical principles. The text also includes a basic introduction to findings of advanced logic. As indicators of where the student could go next with logic, the book closes with an overview of advanced topics, such as the axiomatic method, set theory, Peano arithmetic, and modal logic. Throughout, the text uses brief, concise chapters that readers will find easy to read and to review.

(4 reviews)

Introduction to Logic and Critical Thinking

Contributor: Van Cleave

Publisher: Matthew J. Van Cleave

License: CC BY

This is an introductory textbook in logic and critical thinking. The goal of the textbook is to provide the reader with a set of tools and skills that will enable them to identify and evaluate arguments. The book is intended for an introductory course that covers both formal and informal logic. As such, it is not a formal logic textbook, but is closer to what one would find marketed as a “critical thinking textbook.”

(10 reviews)