"The Republic is Plato's masterwork. It was written 2,400 years ago and remains one of the most widely read books in the world, famous for both the richness of its ideas and the virtuosity of its writing. Presented as a dialogue between Plato's teacher Socrates and various interlocutors, it is an exhortation to study philosophy, inviting its readers to reflect on the choices we must make if we are to live the best life available to us. This complex,...

The classic handbook of statecraft written by an Italian nobleman recommends guile and craftiness to attain and maintain political power.

"Plato of Athens, who laid the foundations of the Western philosophical tradition and in range and depth ranks among its greatest practitioners, was born to a prosperous and politically active family circa 427 BC. In early life an admirer of Socrates, Plato later founded the first institution of higher learning in the West, the Academy, among whose many notable alumni was Aristotle. Traditionally ascribed to Plato are thirty-five dialogues developing...

Leonardo's writings on painting were never edited by Leonardo himself into a coherent treatise. The book known as Leonardo's Treatise on Painting, first published in 1651, comprises a compilation of quotations, described by one early translator as a "chaos of intelligence." This anthology aims to bring order into the chaos, so Leonardo's views can be read in a logical and sequential manner. The authors have edited material not only from the Treatise...

Francis Bacon's, The Advancement of Learning (1605) is considered the first major philosophical book written in English. In it, Bacon is concerned with scientific learning: the current state of knowledge, obstacles to its progress, and his own plans for revitalization of schools and universities. Here Bacon sets forth the first account of science as intended for "the relief of man's estate." With this newly designed and reset edition, this important...

Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1533 - 1592) was one of the most influential writers of the French Renaissance, known for popularizing the essay as a literary genre. He became famous for his effortless ability to merge serious intellectual exercises with casual anecdotes and autobiography--and his massive volume Essais (translated literally as "Attempts" or "Trials") contains, to this day, some of the most widely influential essays ever written. Montaigne...

Gulliver's Travels is Jonathan Swift's satirical masterpiece, the fantastic tale of the four voyages of Lemuel Gulliver, an English ship's surgeon. At first, he is shipwrecked in the land of Lilliput, where the alarmed residents are only six inches high. His second voyage takes him to the land of Brobdingnag, where the people are sixty feet high. Further adventures bring Gulliver to an island that floats in the sky and to a land where horses are endowed...

"Marcus Aurelius Antoninus was the sixteenth emperor of Rome -- and by far the most powerful and wealthiest man in the world. Yet he was also an intensely private person, with a rich interior life and deep reservoirs of personal insight. He collected his thoughts in notebooks, gems which have come to be called his Meditations. Never intended for publication, the work survived his death and has proved an inexhaustible source of wisdom and one of the...