(5) Tree Line

The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen isn't the most exciting bedtime story you've ever read…but it also isn't going to send you searching through the dictionary trying to figure out giant, archaic words.

It's a legal document written over two hundred years ago so yeah: it's a bit dry. However, it's also short, less than a thousand words. And the words themselves aren't especially big or complicated. The preamble has some run-on sentences, but then it's smooth sailing through the brief and to-the-point articles, which are almost snappy in their succinctness. As far as 18th-century writing goes, this is about as good as it gets.