(2) Base Camp

Martin Luther King wasn't playing around when he delivered his "I Have A Dream" speech. He wasn't playing around when it came to packing a punch with his amazing thoughts, and he wasn't playing around with complicated, fussy, SAT word-laden compound sentences.

The man had something to say, and he wanted everyone to hear it. Bonus: he wanted everyone to hear it in seventeen beautifully brief minutes.

So don't worry: the short length, simple structure, and big-crowd vocab of "I Have a Dream" make it one of the easier historical texts to read. And, if you listen to a recording of the speech (which you really should, because MLK's voice is amazing) they're a breeze.

The only catch is that, in order to understand the speech properly, you have to have an appreciation of the historical tensions of the time. But hey: that's why we're here.