iBooks love: free e-books worth reading

The National Association of Scholars just published a list of brain-challenging books that they recommend for college reading programs, but which should be of interest to any passionate adult-level reader. These books were selected for presenting important, well-argued ideas with a level of complexity that stretches the mind -- basically they function as upgraded "beach reading" for the scholarly set.

Many of these titles are freely downloadable in ePub format and can be synced to iBooks for your portable reading pleasure. Here's a quick run-down of some of the recommended books, along with quick links to iBooks-compatible downloads.

• Flatland by Edwin Abbot (Illustrated version)

• Confessions by St. Augustine

• Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan (Also available in iTunes Audiobook format)

• The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper (Illustrated version)

• Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin (Illustrated version, also available in MP3 audio)

• American Notes for General Circulation by Charles Dickens

• Autobiography by Ben Franklin

• The Blithedale Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne

• Kim by Rudyard Kipling

• Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis

• Speeches and Letters, Abraham Lincoln (the article refers to Speeches and Writings, so I hope I linked to the correct ePub here...)

• On Liberty by John Stuart Mills (PDF but iBooks-compatible)

• Apology of Socrates by Plato

• Crito by Plato

• Parallel Lives by Plutarch (Updated link)

• Essay on Criticism by Alexander Pope

• Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain (Illustrated version, also available as an audio book)

• Candide by Voltaire (Illustrated version, also available as an audio book)

• Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa, Robert Louis Stevenson