'It is singular, that my having spent a winter with one of the most dissipated women in England should have sobered my mind so completely.' Maria Edgeworth's 1801 novel, Belinda, …
A classic study of the beliefs and institutions of mankind, and the progress through magic and religion to scientific thought, The Golden Bough has a unique status in modern …
Discourses on Livy (1531) is as essential to an understanding of Machiavelli as his famous treatise, The Prince. Equally controversial, it reveals his fundamental preference for a …
'When the wheel of sexual ecstasy is in full motion, there is no textbook at all, and no order.' The Kamasutra is the oldest extant Hindu textbook of erotic love. It is about the …
The Communist Manifesto is one of the most influential pieces of political propaganda ever written. It is a summary of the whole Marxist vision of history and is the foundation …
'She sees, coming up a second time, Earth from the ocean, eternally green; the waterfalls plunge, an eagle soars above them, over the mountain hunting fish.' After the terrible …
The Politics is one of the most influential texts in the history of political thought, and it raises issues which still confront anyone who wants to think seriously about the ways …
'Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure.' In The Theory of the Leisure Class Thorstein Veblen sets out 'to discuss the …
'it is only the cultivation of individuality which produces, or can produce, well developed human beings' Mill's four essays, 'On Liberty', 'Utilitarianism', 'Considerations on …
He that is to govern a whole nation, must read in himself, not this, or that particular man; but mankind. Leviathan is both a magnificent literary achievement and the greatest …
