When I was in school taking a New York History class, me and my classmates had about ten books assigned to us for the course. My favorite was by far "Ragged Dick". I finished reading Alger's classic in one sitting. I couldn't help but root for Ragged Dick and greatly admired his indomitable spirit and strong sense of morality. Who knows if such a blackboot ever existed in real life. If he did, he'd be very special and very rare. One look through Jacob Riis' seminal book, "How the Other Half Lives" should convince anyone that life for a street urchin, in the Lower East Side during the 19th century, was extremely hard and didn't afford many opportunities for advancement. Food and shelter were of utmost importance. Everything else came second, even clothes, shoes, and an education. Horatio Alger, just like Charles Loring Brace and Jacob Riis to name a few, should be commended for exposing the plight of these orphaned and abused children living in and around the Five Points area of old New York.Still, in a way, it's amusing to read these books and think how Alger firmly believed Capitalism was the way out of poverty but never acknowledged how it also contributed to the dire conditions these ragged children found themselves in. Being poor was considered, during the time of Ragged Dick, a personal flaw, as if there was something inherently wrong with the individual who found himself destitute. The popular thinking in America, at least by those who were comfortable or who had already attained wealth, is best explained by former reverend Russell Conwell (February 15, 1843 - December 6, 1925) in his famous speech entitled, "Acres of Diamonds" where he states: "let us remember there is not a poor person in the United States who was not made poor by his own shortcomings". Of course, 19th century New York has shown posterity that the issues of poverty were much more complex.The reader should keep in mind, these books were meant for young boys of a different time and were written as a lesson in morality and etiquette. But that's not to say they're not timeless and can't be enjoyed by the modern reader. On the contrary, they are truly a joy to read and will bring hours of pleasure to you.However, there are two points I'd like to bring up, briefly, as to what I didn't like about this Kindle series:+ The conversion to the Kindle format created formatting errors such as sentences separated from their paragraphs.+ Grammatical errors.Aside from that, these classics should be required reading just as much as "Tom Sawyer" and "Huckleberry Finn". Also, bear in mind the books following "Ragged Dick" were not available before and could only be read at certain private libraries. Many thanks to those responsible for the reprinting of "The Complete Ragged Dick Series".