Light's bookshelf: all en-US Mon, 28 Apr 2025 12:16:03 -0700 60 Light's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten: 100 Experiments for the Armchair Philosopher]]> 282758 320 Julian Baggini 0452287448 Light 0 to-read 3.74 2005 The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten: 100 Experiments for the Armchair Philosopher
author: Julian Baggini
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average rating: 3.74
book published: 2005
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]]> <![CDATA[Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy]]> 127813261 320 Simon Blackburn Light 0 to-read 3.40 1999 Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy
author: Simon Blackburn
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average rating: 3.40
book published: 1999
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]]> <![CDATA[Introductory Lectures on Aesthetics]]> 117249 Librarian note: an alternate cover for this edition can be found here.

For Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831), art almost ranked with religion and philosophy in its power to reveal the fundamental nature of existence. But although he lived in the German golden age of Goethe, Schiller and Mozart, he also believed that art was in terminal decline.

To resolve this apparent paradox, as Michael Inwood explains in his incisive Introduction, we must understand the particular place of aesthetics in Hegel's vast intellectual edifice. Its central pillars consist of logic, philosophy of nature and philosophy of spirit. Art derives its value from offering a sensory vision of the God-like absolute, from its harmonious fusion of form and content, and from summing up the world-view of an age such as Homer's. While it scaled supreme heights in ancient Greece, Hegel doubted art's ability to encompass Christian belief or the reflective irony characteristic of modern societies. Many such challenging ideas are developed in this superb treatise; it counts among the most stimulating works of a master thinker.

Table of Contents
Introductory Lectures on Aesthetics Introduction A Note on the Translation and Commentary
INTRODUCTORY LECTURES ON AESTHETICS

Chapter I: The Range of Aesthetic Defined, and Some Objections against the Philosophy of Art Refuted
[α Aesthetic confined to Beauty of Art
β Does Art merit Scientific Treatment?
γ Is Scientific Treatment appropriate to Art?
δ Answer to β
ε Answer to γ]

Chapter II: Methods of Science Applicable to Beauty and Art
[1. Empirical Method - Art-scholarship
(a) Its Range
(b) It generates Rules and Theories
(c) The Rights of Genius
2. Abstract Reflection
3. The Philosophical Conception of Artistic Beauty, general notion of]

Chapter III: The Conception of Artistic Beauty
Part I - The Work of Art as Made and as Sensuous
1. Work of Art as Product of Human Activity
[(a) Conscious Production by Rule
(b) Artistic Inspiration
(c) Dignity of Production by Man
(d) Man's Need to produce Works of Art]
2. Work of Art as addressed to Man's Sense
[(a) Object of Art - Pleasant Feeling?
(b) Feeling of Beauty - Taste
(c) Art-scholarship
(d) Profounder Consequences of Sensuous Nature of Art
(α) Relations of the Sensuous to the Mind
(αα) Desire
(ββ) Theory
(γγ) Sensuous as Symbol of Spiritual
(β) The Sensuous Element, how Present in the Artist
(γ) The Content of Art Sensuous]

Part II - The End of Art
3. [The Interest or End of Art
(a) Imitation of Nature?
(α) Mere Repetition of Nature is -
(αα) Superfluous
(ββ) Imperfect
(γγ) Amusing Merely as Sleight of Hand
(β) What is Good to Imitate?
(γ) Some Arts cannot be called Imitative
(b) Humani nihil - ?
(c) Mitigation of the Passions?
(α) How Art mitigates the Passions
(β) How Art purifies the Passions
(αα) It must have a Worthy Content
(ββ) But ought not to be Didactic
(γγ) Nor explicitly addressed to a Moral Purpose
(d) Art has its own Purpose as Revelation of Truth]

Chapter IV: Historical Deducation of the True Idea of Art in Modern Philosophy
1. Kant
[(a) Pleasure in Beauty not Appetitive
(b) Pleasure in Beauty Universal
(c) The Beautiful in its Teleological Aspect
(d) Delight in the Beautiful necessary though felt]
2. Schiller, Winckelmann, Schelling
3. The Irony

Chapter V: Division of the Subject
[1. The Condition of Artistic Presentation is the Correspondence of Matter and Plastic Form
2. Part I - The Ideal
3. Part II - The Types of Art
(α) Symbolic Art
(β) Classical Art
(γ) Romantic Art
4. Part III - The Several Arts
(α) Architecture
(β) Sculpture
(γ) Romantic Art, comprising
(i) Painting
(ii) Music
(iii) Poetry
5. Conclusion]

Commentary

]]> 197 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel 014043335X Light 0 to-read 3.91 Introductory Lectures on Aesthetics
author: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
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]]> <![CDATA[Fighting Fascism: How to Struggle and How to Win]]> 34381518 130 Clara Zetkin 1608468526 Light 0 to-read 4.33 1923 Fighting Fascism: How to Struggle and How to Win
author: Clara Zetkin
name: Light
average rating: 4.33
book published: 1923
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]]> <![CDATA[It's Not Over: Learning from the Socialist Experiment]]> 27180526
The path to a better world can’t be found without knowledge of history. It’s Not Over: Learning From the Socialist Experiment analyzes the 20th century attempts to supplant capitalism in order to draw lessons with application to the emerging and future movements that seek to overcome the political and economic crises of today. This history is presented through the the words and actions of the men and women who made these revolutions, and the everyday experiences of the millions of people who put new revolutionary ideas into practice under the pressures of enormous internal and external forces. This is history that can be applied to today’s struggles to shape our world, in which new ideas are emerging to bring about the economic democracy that is indispensable to a rational and sustainable future.

Repeated economic crises and ongoing stagnation has led millions of people around the world to question the economic assumptions that they have long lived with, and to begin to seek out new ideas. As part of this process, people will inevitably look to the attempts to supplant capitalism in the past and want to know more about them. After frank examinations of the Soviet Union, the Prague Spring of Czechoslovakia and Sandinista Nicaragua, It’s Not Over concludes with a chapter on why we have the difficulties we do under capitalism, and ideas and discussion of what a better world might look like.]]> 992 Pete Dolack 1785350498 Light 0 to-read 4.12 2016 It's Not Over: Learning from the Socialist Experiment
author: Pete Dolack
name: Light
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2016
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]]> <![CDATA[On Liberty and The Subjection of Women]]> 524992
John Stuart Mill was a prodigious thinker who sharply challenged the beliefs of his age. In On Liberty, one of the sacred texts of liberalism, he argues that any democracy risks becoming a "tyranny of opinion" in which minority views are suppressed if they do not conform to those of the majority. The Subjection of Women , written shortly after the death of Mill's wife, Harriet, stresses the importance of sexual equality. Together they provide eloquent testimony to the hopes and anxieties of Victorian England, and offer a trenchant consideration of what it really means to be free.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.]]> 248 John Stuart Mill 014144147X Light 0 to-read 3.93 1869 On Liberty and The Subjection of Women
author: John Stuart Mill
name: Light
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1869
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]]> <![CDATA[A Vindication of the Rights of Woman]]> 224387 269 Mary Wollstonecraft 0141441259 Light 0 to-read 3.92 1792 A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
author: Mary Wollstonecraft
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average rating: 3.92
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]]> <![CDATA[They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933�45]]> 34606740
That’s Milton Mayer, writing in a foreword to the 1966 edition of They Thought They Were Free . He’s right about the the book was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1956. General readers may have been slower to take notice, but over time they did—what we’ve seen over decades is that any time people, across the political spectrum, start to feel that freedom is threatened, the book experiences a ripple of word-of-mouth interest. And that interest has never been more prominent or potent than what we’ve seen in the past year.

They Thought They Were Free is an eloquent and provocative examination of the development of fascism in Germany. Mayer’s book is a study of ten Germans and their lives from 1933-45, based on interviews he conducted after the war when he lived in Germany. Mayer had a position as a research professor at the University of Frankfurt and lived in a nearby small Hessian town which he disguised with the name “Kronenberg.� “These ten men were not men of distinction,� Mayer noted, but they had been members of the Nazi Party; Mayer wanted to discover what had made them Nazis. His discussions with them of Nazism, the rise of the Reich, and mass complicity with evil became the backbone of this book, an indictment of the ordinary German that is all the more powerful for its refusal to let the rest of us pretend that our moment, our society, our country are fundamentally immune.

A new foreword to this edition by eminent historian of the Reich Richard J. Evans puts the book in historical and contemporary context. We live in an age of fervid politics and hyperbolic rhetoric. They Thought They Were Free cuts through that, revealing instead the slow, quiet accretions of change, complicity, and abdication of moral authority that quietly mark the rise of evil.]]> 384 Milton Sanford Mayer 022652583X Light 0 to-read 4.13 1955 They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933–45
author: Milton Sanford Mayer
name: Light
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1955
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]]> <![CDATA[Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib]]> 78612 448 Seymour M. Hersh 0060955376 Light 0 to-read 3.97 2004 Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib
author: Seymour M. Hersh
name: Light
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2004
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]]> <![CDATA[The Cambridge History of the Cold War (Volume 1)]]> 12889687 662 Melvyn P. Leffler 1107602297 Light 0 to-read, the-cold-war-shelf 3.60 2010 The Cambridge History of the Cold War (Volume 1)
author: Melvyn P. Leffler
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average rating: 3.60
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]]> <![CDATA[An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States (ReVisioning History)]]> 23995387 The first history of the United States told from the perspective of indigenous peoples

Today in the United States, there are more than five hundred federally recognized Indigenous nations comprising nearly three million people, descendants of the fifteen million Native people who once inhabited this land. The centuries-long genocidal program of the US settler-colonial regimen has largely been omitted from history. Now, for the first time, acclaimed historian and activist Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz offers a history of the United States told from the perspective of Indigenous peoples and reveals how Native Americans, for centuries, actively resisted expansion of the US empire.

With growing support for movements such as the campaign to abolish Columbus Day and replace it with Indigenous Peoples� Day and the Dakota Access Pipeline protest led by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, An Indigenous Peoples� History of the United States is an essential resource providing historical threads that are crucial for understanding the present. In An Indigenous Peoples� History of the United States, Dunbar-Ortiz adroitly challenges the founding myth of the United States and shows how policy against the Indigenous peoples was colonialist and designed to seize the territories of the original inhabitants, displacing or eliminating them. And as Dunbar-Ortiz reveals, this policy was praised in popular culture, through writers like James Fenimore Cooper and Walt Whitman, and in the highest offices of government and the military. Shockingly, as the genocidal policy reached its zenith under President Andrew Jackson, its ruthlessness was best articulated by US Army general Thomas S. Jesup, who, in 1836, wrote of the Seminoles: “The country can be rid of them only by exterminating them.�

Spanning more than four hundred years, this classic bottom-up peoples� history radically reframes US history and explodes the silences that have haunted our national narrative.

An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States is a 2015 PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles Award for Excellence in Literature.]]> 296 Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz 0807057835 Light 0 to-read 4.41 2014 An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States (ReVisioning History)
author: Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
name: Light
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2014
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]]> <![CDATA[Fanshen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village]]> 4020686 672 William Hinton 1583671757 Light 0 to-read 4.31 1966 Fanshen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village
author: William Hinton
name: Light
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1966
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]]> The Talmud: A Selection 6093191 The most important text in Judaism after the Old Testament- available for the first time in Penguin Classics

One of the most significant religious texts in the world, The Talmud is a compilation of the teachings of major Jewish scholars from the classic period of rabbinic Judaism. In a range of styles, including commentary, parables, proverbs, and anecdotes, it provides guidance on all aspects of everyday life. This selection of its most illuminating passages makes accessible to modern readers the centuries of Jewish thought contained within.

Norman Solomon's lucid translation from the Bavli (Babylonian) is accompanied by an introduction on The Talmud's arrangement, social and historical background, reception, and authors.]]> 896 Norman Solomon 014144178X Light 0 to-read 3.76 2009 The Talmud: A Selection
author: Norman Solomon
name: Light
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2009
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]]> Dialogues and Letters 103882
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust theseries to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-datetranslations by award-winning translators.]]> 160 Seneca 0140446796 Light 0 to-read 4.27 65 Dialogues and Letters
author: Seneca
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average rating: 4.27
book published: 65
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]]> The Koran (Penguin Classics) 151476104 464 ѳḥa Light 0 to-read 4.17 The Koran (Penguin Classics)
author: ѳḥa
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]]> Win Every Argument 127282592 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

Win Every Argument shows how anyone can communicate with confidence, rise above the tit for tats on social media, and triumph in a successful and productive debate in the real world.

MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan isn’t one to avoid arguments. He relishes them as the lifeblood of democracy and the only surefire way to establish the truth. Arguments help us solve problems, uncover new ideas we might not have considered, and nudge our disagreements toward mutual understanding. A good argument, made in good faith, has intrinsic value—and can also simply be fun.

Arguments are everywhere—and especially given the fierce debates we’re all embroiled in today, everyone wants to win. In this riveting guide to the art of argument and rhetoric, Hasan shows you how. As a journalist, anchor, and interviewer who has clashed with politicians, generals, spy chiefs, and celebrities from across the world, Hasan reveals his tricks of the trade for the first time.

Whether you are making a presentation at work or debating current political issues with a friend, Mehdi Hasan will teach you how to sharpen your speaking skills to make the winning case.]]> 336 Mehdi Hasan 125085346X Light 0 to-read 4.12 2023 Win Every Argument
author: Mehdi Hasan
name: Light
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2023
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]]> The Search for Modern China 215801115 768 Jonathan D. Spence 1324070021 Light 0 to-read 0.0 1990 The Search for Modern China
author: Jonathan D. Spence
name: Light
average rating: 0.0
book published: 1990
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The China Mirage: The Hidden History of American Disaster in Asia]]> 20706261
In each of his books, James Bradley has exposed the hidden truths behind America's engagement in Asia. Now comes his most engrossing work yet. Beginning in the 1850s, Bradley introduces us to the prominent Americans who made their fortunes in the China opium trade. As they -- -good Christians all -- -profitably addicted millions, American missionaries arrived, promising salvation for those who adopted Western ways.

And that was just the beginning.

From drug dealer Warren Delano to his grandson Franklin Delano Roosevelt, from the port of Hong Kong to the towers of Princeton University, from the era of Appomattox to the age of the A-Bomb, The China Mirage explores a difficult century that defines U.S.-Chinese relations to this day.]]> 432 James D. Bradley 0316196673 Light 0 to-read, the-china-shelf 4.02 2014 The China Mirage: The Hidden History of American Disaster in Asia
author: James D. Bradley
name: Light
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2014
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]]> Sun Yat-sen 456244
This book argues that the life and work of Sun Yat-sen have been distorted both by the creation of the myth and by the attempts at demythification. Its aim is to provide a fresh overall evaluation of the man and the events that turned an adventurer into the founder of the Chinese Republic and the leader of a great nationalist movement. The Sun Yat-sen who emerges from this rigorously researched account is a muddled politician, an opportunist with generous but confused ideas, a theorist without great originality or intellectual rigor.

But the author demonstrates that the importance of Sun Yat-sen lies elsewhere. A Cantonese raised in Hawaii and Hong Kong, he was a product of maritime China, the China of the coastal provinces and overseas communities, open to foreign influences and acutely aware of the modern Western world (he was fund-raising in Denver when the eleventh attempt to bring down the Chinese empire finally succeeded). In facing the problems of change, of imitating the West, of rejecting or adapting tradition, he instinctively grasped the aspirations of his time, understood their force, and crystallized them into practical programs.

Sun Yat-sen’s gifts enabled him to foresee the danger that technology might represent to democracy, stressed the role of infrastructures (transport, energy) in economic modernization, and looked forward to a new style of diplomatic and international economic relations based upon cooperation that bypassed or absorbed old hostilities. These “utopias� of his, at which his contemporaries heartily jeered, now seem to be so many prophecies.

]]> 502 Marie-Claire Bergère 0804740119 Light 0 to-read, the-china-shelf 3.53 1994 Sun Yat-sen
author: Marie-Claire Bergère
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average rating: 3.53
book published: 1994
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]]> America Against America 60894720 349 Wang Huning Light 0 to-read, the-china-shelf 3.62 1991 America Against America
author: Wang Huning
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average rating: 3.62
book published: 1991
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]]> City of God 25673 Bible itself had a greater influence on the Middle Ages than Augustine's City of God. And since medieval Europe was the cradle of modern Western society, this work is vital for understanding our world and how it came into being.]]> 1186 Augustine of Hippo 0140448942 Light 0 3.91 426 City of God
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average rating: 3.91
book published: 426
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]]> Tao Te Ching 8192772 193 Lao Tzu Light 0 3.91 -350 Tao Te Ching
author: Lao Tzu
name: Light
average rating: 3.91
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]]> Mencius 614121
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust theseries to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-datetranslations by award-winning translators.]]> 246 Mencius 014044971X Light 0 3.83 -300 Mencius
author: Mencius
name: Light
average rating: 3.83
book published: -300
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]]> <![CDATA[The New China Playbook: Beyond Socialism and Capitalism]]> 203770169 A myth-dispelling, comprehensive guide to the Chinese economy and its path to ascendancy

China's economy has been booming for decades now. A formidable and emerging power on the world stage, the China that most Americans picture is only a rough sketch, based on American news coverage, policy, and ways of understanding.

Enter Keyu Jin: a world-renowned economist who was born in China, educated in the U.S., and is now a tenured professor at the London School of Economics. A person fluent in both Eastern and Western cultures, and a voice of the new generation of Chinese who represent a radical break from the past, Jin is uniquely poised to explain how China became the most successful economic story of our time, as it has shifted from primarily state-owned enterprise to an economy that is thriving in entrepreneurship, and participation in the global economy.

China’s economic realm is colorful and lively, filled with paradoxes and conundrums, and Jin believes that by understanding the Chinese model, the people, the culture and history in its true perspective, one can reconcile what may appear to be contradictions to the Western eye.

What follows is an illuminating account of a burgeoning world power, its past, and its potential future.]]> 368 Keyu Jin 1800753861 Light 0 to-read, the-china-shelf 5.00 2023 The New China Playbook: Beyond Socialism and Capitalism
author: Keyu Jin
name: Light
average rating: 5.00
book published: 2023
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]]> <![CDATA[Fearing China: Asking the question: Should we fear China?]]> 26851292 � Is China the biggest threat to our cyber security?
� Are Chinese products like toys and food dangerous?
� Is China destroying the planet with pollution?
� Should we refuse to work with China on technology?
� Is China cheating on trade with currency manipulation and other tactics?
� Is China stealing all that we create by ignoring intellectual property rights?
� Should the U.S. promote democracy in China?
� Are human rights in China ignored with the denial of basic freedoms like the right to vote, limits on freedom of speech, and a one-child policy?
� Is a growing gap between rich and poor setting the stage for a revolution? Go on a journey of exploration to learn what's unfolding in China today, and along the way, discover important moments from China’s past that influence its present. Look beyond the headlines and into the statistical facts and the untold "rest of the story," to better understand China’s rise. With each chapter, you’ll be challenged to consider a different path for U.S.-China relations—a path that considers China not as our greatest threat, but as our greatest opportunity.]]> 247 Terry Wittenmyer Light 0 to-read, the-china-shelf 4.50 2015 Fearing China: Asking the question: Should we fear China?
author: Terry Wittenmyer
name: Light
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2015
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]]> Animal Farm 75486140
The book tells the story of a group of farm animals who rebel against their human farmer, hoping to create a society where the animals can be equal, free, and happy. Ultimately, however, the rebellion is betrayed, and the farm ends up in a state as bad as it was before, under the dictatorship of a pig named Napoleon.

One night, all the animals at Mr. Jones' Manor Farm assemble in a barn to hear old Major, a pig, describe a dream he had about a world where all animals live free from the tyranny of their human masters. Old Major dies soon after the meeting, but the animals � inspired by his philosophy of Animalism � plot a rebellion against Jones.

Two pigs, Snowball and Napoleon, prove themselves important figures and planners of this dangerous enterprise. When Jones forgets to feed the animals, the revolution occurs, and Jones and his men are chased off the farm. Manor Farm is renamed Animal Farm, and the Seven Commandments of Animalism are painted on the barn wall...]]> 128 George Orwell 0452284244 Light 0 to-read 4.14 1945 Animal Farm
author: George Orwell
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average rating: 4.14
book published: 1945
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]]> We 76171 The exhilarating dystopian novel that inspired George Orwell's 1984 and foreshadowed the worst excesses of Soviet Russia

Yevgeny Zamyatin's We is a powerfully inventive vision that has influenced writers from George Orwell to Ayn Rand. In a glass-enclosed city of absolute straight lines, ruled over by the all-powerful 'Benefactor', the citizens of the totalitarian society of OneState live out lives devoid of passion and creativity - until D-503, a mathematician who dreams in numbers, makes a discovery: he has an individual soul. Set in the twenty-sixth century AD, We is the classic dystopian novel and was the forerunner of works such as George Orwell's 1984 and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. It was suppressed for many years in Russia and remains a resounding cry for individual freedom, yet is also a powerful, exciting and vivid work of science fiction. Clarence Brown's brilliant translation is based on the corrected text of the novel, first published in Russia in 1988 after more than sixty years' suppression.]]> 256 Yevgeny Zamyatin 0140185852 Light 0 to-read 3.91 1924 We
author: Yevgeny Zamyatin
name: Light
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1924
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]]> Brave New World 5129 Brave New World is a searching vision of an unequal, technologically-advanced future where humans are genetically bred, socially indoctrinated, and pharmaceutically anesthetized to passively uphold an authoritarian ruling order–all at the cost of our freedom, full humanity, and perhaps also our souls. “A genius [who] who spent his life decrying the onward march of the Machine� (The New Yorker), Huxley was a man of incomparable talents: equally an artist, a spiritual seeker, and one of history’s keenest observers of human nature and civilization. Brave New World, his masterpiece, has enthralled and terrified millions of readers, and retains its urgent relevance to this day as both a warning to be heeded as we head into tomorrow and as thought-provoking, satisfying work of literature. Written in the shadow of the rise of fascism during the 1930s, Brave New Worldd likewise speaks to a 21st-century world dominated by mass-entertainment, technology, medicine and pharmaceuticals, the arts of persuasion, and the hidden influence of elites.

"Aldous Huxley is the greatest 20th century writer in English." —Chicago Tribune]]> 268 Aldous Huxley 0060929871 Light 0 to-read 3.99 1932 Brave New World
author: Aldous Huxley
name: Light
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1932
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]]> <![CDATA[Inventing Reality: The Politics of News Media]]> 673719 274 Michael Parenti 0312020139 Light 0 to-read 4.53 1986 Inventing Reality: The Politics of News Media
author: Michael Parenti
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average rating: 4.53
book published: 1986
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]]> <![CDATA[The People's State: East German Society from Hitler to Honecker]]> 6420449 352 Mary Fulbrook 0300144245 Light 0 to-read 3.80 2006 The People's State: East German Society from Hitler to Honecker
author: Mary Fulbrook
name: Light
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2006
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]]> <![CDATA[Stalin: History and Critique of a Black Legend]]> 193771912 388 Domenico Losurdo 1088162541 Light 0 4.41 2008 Stalin: History and Critique of a Black Legend
author: Domenico Losurdo
name: Light
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2008
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date added: 2025/04/10
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]]> <![CDATA[The Shortest History of the Soviet Union]]> 60521529


This book is a lively and authoritative distillation of this complex history, told with vivid details, a grand sweep, and wry wit. The acclaimed historian Sheila Fitzpatrick chronicles the Soviet Age--its rise, reign, and unexpected fall, as well as its afterlife in today's Russia. She underscores the many ironies of the Soviet experience: An ideology that claimed to offer humanity the reins of history wrangled with contingency. An avowedly internationalist and anti-imperialist state birthed an array of nationalisms. And a vision of transcending economic and social inequality and injustice gave rise to a country that was, in its way, surprisingly normal.

Moving seamlessly from Lenin to Stalin to Gorbachev to Putin, The Shortest History of the Soviet Union provides an indispensable guide to one of the twentieth century's great powers and the enduring fascination it still exerts.]]> 248 Sheila Fitzpatrick 1760643076 Light 0 currently-reading 3.59 2022 The Shortest History of the Soviet Union
author: Sheila Fitzpatrick
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average rating: 3.59
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]]> <![CDATA[Coup d'État: A Practical Handbook]]> 27311804
The world has changed dramatically in the past half century, but not the essence of the coup d etat. It still requires the secret recruitment of military officers who command the loyalty of units well placed to seize important headquarters and key hubs in the capital city. The support of the armed forces as a whole is needed only in the aftermath, to avoid countercoups. And mass support is largely irrelevant, although passive acceptance is essential. To ensure it, violence must be kept to a minimum. The ideal coup is swift and bloodless. Very violent coups rarely succeed, and if they trigger a bloody civil war they fail utterly.

Luttwak identifies conditions that make countries vulnerable to a coup, and he outlines the necessary stages of planning, from recruitment of coconspirators to postcoup promises of progress and stability. But much more broadly, his investigation of coups" "updated for the twenty-first century uncovers important truths about the nature of political power."]]> 304 Edward N. Luttwak 0674737261 Light 0 to-read 4.20 1968 Coup d'État: A Practical Handbook
author: Edward N. Luttwak
name: Light
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1968
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]]> <![CDATA[The Shortest History of Japan: From Mythical Origins to Pop Culture Powerhouse―The Global Drama of an Ancient Island Nation (The Shortest History Series)]]> 199587136 Discover the aesthetic traditions, political resilience, and modern economic might of this singular island nation.


Zen, haiku, martial arts, sushi, anime, manga, film, video games . . . Japanese culture has long enriched our Western way of life. Yet from a Western perspective, Japan remains a remote island country that has long had a complicated relationship with the outside world.


Japan—an archipelago strung like a necklace around the Asian mainland—is considerably farther from Asia than Britain is from Europe. The sea has provided an effective barrier against invasion and enabled the culture to develop in unique ways. During the Edo period, the Tokugawa shoguns successfully closed the country to the West. Then, Japan swung in the opposite direction, adopting Western culture wholesale. Both strategies enabled it to avoid colonization—and to retain its traditions and way of life.


A skilled storyteller and accurate historian, Lesley Downer presents the dramatic sweep of Japanese history and the larger-than-life individuals—from emperors descended from the Sun Goddess to warlords, samurai, merchants, court ladies, women warriors, geisha, and businessmen—who shaped this extraordinary modern society.


The Shortest History books deliver thousands of years of history in one riveting, fast-paced read.

]]> 256 Lesley Downer 1891011669 Light 0 to-read 3.77 2024 The Shortest History of Japan: From Mythical Origins to Pop Culture Powerhouse―The Global Drama of an Ancient Island Nation (The Shortest History Series)
author: Lesley Downer
name: Light
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2024
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]]> <![CDATA[The Shortest History of Ancient Rome]]> 221413324 'For who is so indifferent or indolent as not to wish to know by what means the Romans succeeded in subjecting nearly the whole inhabited world to their sole government � a thing unique in history?' —Polybius, second century BCE


The Roman Empire is one of history's most remarkable civilisations. It flourished for around 500 years and encompassed over twenty-five modern-day countries � including such remote (from Rome) places as Saudi Arabia, Ukraine and England. It left an indelible mark on the world, shaping politics, laws, philosophy and architecture, and giving us Roman numerals, the calendar, aqueducts and concrete. Alongside the Greeks, the Romans laid the groundwork for Western civilisation.


From the foundation myths of a beloved city to the decline and fall of the empire, author and historian Ross King shares the astonishing, entertaining story of Ancient Rome. He introduces the emperors and warriors, the madmen and upstarts, and the artists and gladiators responsible for its rise, its reign � and its ruin.


'King has the gift of clear, unpretentious exposition, and an instinctive narrative flair.' �The Guardian]]> 272 Ross King 1760644439 Light 0 to-read 3.50 The Shortest History of Ancient Rome
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]]> <![CDATA[Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941]]> 39643887 Pulitzer Prize-finalist Stephen Kotkin has written the definitive biography of Joseph Stalin, from collectivization and the Great Terror to the conflict with Hitler's Germany that is the signal event of modern world history

In 1929, Joseph Stalin, having already achieved dictatorial power over the vast Soviet Empire, formally ordered the systematic conversion of the world's largest peasant economy into "socialist modernity," otherwise known as collectivization, regardless of the cost.

What it cost, and what Stalin ruthlessly enacted, transformed the country and its ruler in profound and enduring ways. Building and running a dictatorship, with life and death power over hundreds of millions, made Stalin into the uncanny figure he became. Stephen Kotkin's Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941 is the story of how a political system forged an unparalleled personality and vice versa.

The wholesale collectivization of some 120 million peasants necessitated levels of coercion that were extreme even for Russia, and the resulting mass starvation elicited criticism inside the party even from those Communists committed to the eradication of capitalism. But Stalin did not flinch. By 1934, when the Soviet Union had stabilized and socialism had been implanted in the countryside, praise for his stunning anti-capitalist success came from all quarters. Stalin, however, never forgave and never forgot, with shocking consequences as he strove to consolidate the state with a brand new elite of young strivers like himself. Stalin's obsessions drove him to execute nearly a million people, including the military leadership, diplomatic and intelligence officials, and innumerable leading lights in culture.

While Stalin revived a great power, building a formidable industrialized military, the Soviet Union was effectively alone and surrounded by perceived enemies. The quest for security would bring Soviet Communism to a shocking and improbable pact with Nazi Germany. But that bargain would not unfold as envisioned. The lives of Stalin and Hitler, and the fates of their respective dictatorships, drew ever closer to collision, as the world hung in the balance.

Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941 is a history of the world during the build-up to its most fateful hour, from the vantage point of Stalin's seat of power. It is a landmark achievement in the annals of historical scholarship, and in the art of biography.]]> 1184 Stephen Kotkin 0143132156 Light 0 4.53 2017 Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941
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]]> <![CDATA[Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928]]> 24611630
The product of a decade of intrepid research, Stalin is a landmark achievement. Stephen Kotkin offers a biography that, at long last, is equal to this shrewd, sociopathic, charismatic dictator in all his dimensions. We see a man inclined to despotism who could be utterly charming; a pragmatic ideologue; a leader who obsessed over slights yet was a precocious geostrategic thinker—unique among Bolsheviks—and yet who made egregious strategic blunders. Through it all, we see Stalin’s unflinching persistence, his sheer force of will—perhaps the ultimate key to understanding his indelible mark on history. Drawing on Kotkin’s exhaustive study of Soviet archival materials as well as vast scholarly literature, Stalin recasts the way we think about the Soviet Union, revolution, dictatorship, the twentieth century, and indeed the art of history itself.]]> 949 Stephen Kotkin 0143127861 Light 0 4.36 Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928
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]]> The State and Revolution 823272
In this book Lenin provides a rationale for revolution which yields a wealth of insight into his political thinking. He sets out trenchant views on class conflict, the lessons of earlier revolutions, and the necessity of overthrowing the dictatorship of capital in favor of a dictatorship of the proletariat. As an historical as well as a political document, Lenin's work is crucial to any understanding of the Russian Revolution.

Translated and edited with an introduction by Robert Service]]> 192 Vladimir Lenin 014018435X Light 5 3.95 2021 The State and Revolution
author: Vladimir Lenin
name: Light
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2021
rating: 5
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]]> The Principles of Communism 28083951 Engels is commonly known as a "ruthless party tactician," "brutal ideologue," and "master tactician" when it came to purging rivals in political organizations. However, another strand of Engels's personality was one of a "gregarious," "big-hearted," and "jovial man of outsize appetites," who was referred to by his son-in-law as "the great beheader of champagne bottles."]]> 34 Friedrich Engels 151955723X Light 4 4.09 1847 The Principles of Communism
author: Friedrich Engels
name: Light
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1847
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[Industrial Society and Its Future: Unabomber Manifesto]]> 53151664 "It is important not to confuse freedom with mere permissiveness."Theodore John Kaczynski (1942-) or also known as the Unabomber, is an Americandomestic terrorist and anarchist who moved to a remote cabin in 1971. The cabin lackedelectricity or running water, there he lived as a recluse while learning how to be self-sufficient. He began his bombing campaign in 1978 after witnessing the destruction ofthe wilderness surrounding his cabin.]]> 125 Theodore John Kaczynski Light 0 to-read 3.96 1995 Industrial Society and Its Future: Unabomber Manifesto
author: Theodore John Kaczynski
name: Light
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1995
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]]> Pedagogy of the Oppressed 32489978 160 Paulo Freire 0241301114 Light 0 to-read 4.24 1968 Pedagogy of the Oppressed
author: Paulo Freire
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average rating: 4.24
book published: 1968
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]]> <![CDATA[Cuba: Between Reform and Revolution]]> 23215854 496 Louis A. Pérez Jr. 0199301441 Light 0 to-read 3.83 1988 Cuba: Between Reform and Revolution
author: Louis A. Pérez Jr.
name: Light
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1988
rating: 0
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]]> The Rise of the Roman Empire 70670 Universal History primarily to chronicle and account for the Roman conquest of Greece between 200 and 167 B.C. He saw that Mediterranean history, under Rome's influence, was becoming an organic whole, so he starts his work in 264 B.C. with the beginning of Rome's clash with African Carthage, the rival imperialist power, and
ends with the final destruction of Carthage in 146 B.C.]]> 576 Polybius 0140443622 Light 0 to-read 4.05 -170 The Rise of the Roman Empire
author: Polybius
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average rating: 4.05
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]]> The Histories 1362
Here is the historian, investigating and judging what he has seen, heard, and read, and seeking out the true causes and consequences of the great deeds of the past. In his History , the war between the Greeks and Persians, the origins of their enmity, and all the more general features of the civilizations of the world of his day are seen as a unity and expressed as the vision of one man who as a child lived through the last of the great acts in this universal drama.

In Grene's remarkable translation and commentary, we see the historian as a storyteller, combining through his own narration the skeletal "historical" facts and the imaginative reality toward which his story reaches. Herodotus emerges in all his charm and complexity as a writer and the first historian in the Western tradition, perhaps unique in the way he has seen the interrelation of fact and fantasy.]]> 784 Herodotus 0140449086 Light 0 to-read 3.98 -430 The Histories
author: Herodotus
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]]> <![CDATA[Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World]]> 54503518


Crucifixion, the Romans believed, was the worst fate imaginable, a punishment reserved for slaves. How astonishing it was, then, that people should have come to believe that one particular victim of crucifixion -- an obscure provincial by the name of Jesus -- was to be worshipped as a god. Dominion explores the implications of this shocking conviction as they have reverberated throughout history. Today, the West remains utterly saturated by Christian assumptions. As Tom Holland demonstrates, our morals and ethics are not universal but are instead the fruits of a very distinctive civilization. Concepts such as secularism, liberalism, science, and homosexuality are deeply rooted in a Christian seedbed. From Babylon to the Beatles, Saint Michael to #MeToo, Dominion tells the story of how Christianity transformed the modern world.]]> 640 Tom Holland 1541675592 Light 0 to-read 4.25 2019 Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World
author: Tom Holland
name: Light
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2019
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]]> <![CDATA[Pax: War and Peace in Rome’s Golden Age]]> 103456683 The definitive history of Rome’s golden age—an ultimate superpower at the pinnacle of its greatness

The Pax Romana has long been shorthand for the empire’s golden age. Stretching from Caledonia to Arabia, Rome ruled over a quarter of the world’s population. It was the wealthiest and most formidable state in the history of humankind.

Pax is a captivating narrative history of Rome at the height of its power. From the gilded capital to realms beyond the frontier, historian Tom Holland shows ancient Rome in all its glory: Nero’s downfall, the destruction of Jerusalem and Pompeii, the building of the Colosseum and Hadrian’s Wall, the conquests of Trajan. Vividly sketching the lives of Romans both ordinary and spectacular, from slaves to emperors, Holland shows that Roman peace was the fruit of unprecedented military violence.

A stunning portrait of Rome’s glory days, this is the epic history of the Pax Romana.]]> 480 Tom Holland 0465093531 Light 0 to-read 4.13 2023 Pax: War and Peace in Rome’s Golden Age
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]]> <![CDATA[Dynasty: The Rise and Fall of the House of Caesar]]> 27283972 512 Tom Holland 0345806727 Light 0 to-read 4.14 2015 Dynasty: The Rise and Fall of the House of Caesar
author: Tom Holland
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average rating: 4.14
book published: 2015
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]]> <![CDATA[Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic]]> 91017
From Cicero, Spartacus, and Brutus, to Cleopatra, Virgil, and Augustus, here are some of the most legendary figures in history brought thrillingly to life. Combining verve and freshness with scrupulous scholarship, Rubicon is not only an engrossing history of this pivotal era but a uniquely resonant portrait of a great civilization in all its extremes of self-sacrifice and rivalry, decadence and catastrophe, intrigue, war, and world-shaking ambition.]]> 408 Tom Holland 1400078970 Light 0 to-read 4.22 2003 Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic
author: Tom Holland
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average rating: 4.22
book published: 2003
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]]> <![CDATA[China's Revolutions in the Modern World: A Brief Interpretive History]]> 53170425 A concise account of how revolutions made modern China and helped shape the modern world

China’s emergence as a twenty-first-century global economic, cultural, and political power is often presented as a story of what Chinese leader Xi Jinping calls the nation’s “great rejuvenation,� a story narrated as the return of China to its “rightful� place at the center of the world.

In China’s Revolutions in the Modern World, historian Rebecca E. Karl argues that China’s contemporary emergence is best seen not as a “return,� but rather as the product of revolutionary and counter-revolutionary activity and imaginings. From the Taipings in the mid-nineteenth century through nationalist, anti-imperialist, cultural, and socialist revolutions to today’s capitalist-inflected Communist State, modern China has been made in intellectual dissonance and class struggle, in mass democratic movements and global war, in socialism and anti-socialism, in repression and conflict by multiple generations of Chinese people mobilized to seize history and make the future in their own name. Through China’s successive revolutions, the contours of our contemporary world have taken shape. This brief interpretive history shows how.]]> 240 Rebecca E. Karl 1788735595 Light 0 to-read, the-china-shelf 3.75 2020 China's Revolutions in the Modern World: A Brief Interpretive History
author: Rebecca E. Karl
name: Light
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2020
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]]> <![CDATA[The Lumumba Plot: The Secret History of the CIA and a Cold War Assassination]]> 216390644 A spellbinding work of history that reads like a Cold War spy thriller—about the US-sanctioned plot to assassinate the democratically elected leader of the newly independent Congo

It was supposed to be a moment of great optimism, a cause for jubilation. Congo was at last being set free from Belgium—one of seventeen countries to gain independence in 1960 from ruling European powers. Just days after the handover, however, Congo’s new army mutinied, Belgian forces intervened, and its leader Patrice Lumumba turned to the United Nations for help in saving his newborn nation from what the press was already calling “the Congo Crisis.� Dag Hammarskjold, the tidy Swede who was serving as UN secretary-general, quickly arranged the organization’s biggest peacekeeping mission to date. But chaos was still spreading. Frustrated with the fecklessness of the UN, Lumumba then approached the Soviets for help—an appeal that set off alarm bells at the CIA. To forestall the spread of communism in Africa, the US sent word to the CIA station chief in Leopoldville, Larry Devlin: Lumumba had to go.

Within a year, everything would unravel. The CIA plot to murder Lumumba would fizzle, but he would be deposed in a CIA-backed coup and shot dead by Congolese assassins. Hammarskjold, too, would die, in a mysterious plane crash, en route to negotiate a ceasefire with Congo’s rebellious southeast. And a young, ambitious military officer named Joseph Mobutu, who had once sworn fealty to Lumumba, would seize power in Congo with U.S. help and misrule the country for more than three decades. For the Congolese people, the events of 1960�61 represented the opening chapter of a long horror story. For the U.S. government, however, they provided a playbook for future interventions.]]> 656 Stuart A. Reid 1984899147 Light 0 to-read 4.31 2023 The Lumumba Plot: The Secret History of the CIA and a Cold War Assassination
author: Stuart A. Reid
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average rating: 4.31
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]]> <![CDATA[Young Castro: The Making of a Revolutionary]]> 52756498 This intimate, revisionist portrait of Fidel Castro, showing how an unlikely young Cuban led his country in revolution and transfixed the world, is “sure to become the standard on Castro’s early life� (Publishers Weekly).

Until now, biographers have treated Castro’s life like prosecutors, scouring his past for evidence to convict a person they don’t like or don’t understand. Young Castro challenges us to put aside the caricature of a bearded, cigar-munching, anti-American hothead to discover how Castro became the dictator who acted as a thorn in the side of US presidents for nearly half a century.

In this “gripping and edifying narrative…Hansen brings imposing research and notable erudition� (Booklist) to Castro’s early life, showing Castro getting his toughness from a father who survived Spain’s class system and colonial wars to become one of the most successful independent plantation owners in Cuba. We see a boy running around that plantation more comfortable playing with the children of his father’s laborers than his own classmates at elite boarding schools in Santiago de Cuba and Havana. We discover a young man who writes flowery love letters from prison and contemplates the meaning of life, a gregarious soul attentive to the needs of strangers but often indifferent to the needs of his own family. These pages show a liberal democrat who admires FDR’s New Deal policies and is skeptical of communism, but is also hostile to American imperialism. They show an audacious militant who stages a reckless attack on a military barracks but is canny about building an army of resisters. In short, Young Castro reveals a complex man.

The first American historian in a generation to gain access to the Castro archives in Havana, Jonathan Hansen was able to secure cooperation from Castro’s family and closest confidants. He gained access to hundreds of never-before-seen letters and interviewed people he was the first to ask for their impressions of the man. The result is a nuanced and penetrating portrait of a man at once brilliant, arrogant, bold, vulnerable, and all too human: a man who, having grown up on an island that felt like a colonial cage, was compelled to lead his country to independence.]]> 512 Jonathan M. Hansen 1476732485 Light 0 to-read 5.00 Young Castro: The Making of a Revolutionary
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]]> <![CDATA[Mao: On Contradiction and On Practice]]> 195688027 Two works 81 Mao Zedong Light 0 4.65 Mao: On Contradiction and On Practice
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]]> <![CDATA[Monopoly Capital: An Essay on the American Economic and Social Order]]> 547541 416 Paul A. Baran 0853450730 Light 0 4.20 1966 Monopoly Capital: An Essay on the American Economic and Social Order
author: Paul A. Baran
name: Light
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1966
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]]> <![CDATA[Guerrilla Warfare: Authoritative, Revised, New Edition (The Che Guevara Library)]]> 58068275
Since Guerrilla Warfare was first published in 1961, it has joined the canon of classic military literature, consulted by revolutionaries and counterrevolutionaries alike. In this book, Che Guevara outlines the lessons he learned as a guerrilla soldier in the Cuban revolution and explains how a small group of dedicated fighters grew in strength with the support of the Cuban people, overcoming the odds to vanquish the US-backed dictator’s army and overthrow the dictatorship.

Guerrilla Warfare is both an insightful account of one of the decisive revolutionary movements of the twentieth century and a timeless resource for freedom fighters the world over. This edition includes Che’s corrections and his suggestions for further revisions to the text—revisions his murder in 1967 prevented him from making.]]> 176 Ernesto Che Guevara 1644211467 Light 0 0.0 Guerrilla Warfare: Authoritative, Revised, New Edition (The Che Guevara Library)
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]]> <![CDATA[Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism]]> 14548173 128 Vladimir Lenin 1614271909 Light 0 4.33 1917 Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism
author: Vladimir Lenin
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average rating: 4.33
book published: 1917
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]]> <![CDATA[Democracy Against Capitalism: Renewing Historical Materialism (Radical Thinkers)]]> 25489316 320 Ellen Meiksins Wood 1784782440 Light 0 4.40 Democracy Against Capitalism: Renewing Historical Materialism (Radical Thinkers)
author: Ellen Meiksins Wood
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]]> Reform or Revolution 213519 112 Rosa Luxemburg 0873483030 Light 0 4.21 1900 Reform or Revolution
author: Rosa Luxemburg
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average rating: 4.21
book published: 1900
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]]> <![CDATA[Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy]]> 409558 Grundrisse was considered by Marx to be the first scientific elaboration of communist theory. A collection of seven notebooks on capital and money, it both develops the arguments outlined in the Communist Manifesto (1848) and explores the themes and theses that were to dominate his great later work Capital Here, for the first time, Marx set out his own version of Hegel's dialectics and developed his mature views on labour, surplus value and profit, offering many fresh insights into alienation, automation and the dangers of capitalist society. Yet while the theories in Grundrisse make it a vital precursor to Capital, it also provides invaluable descriptions of Marx's wider-ranging philosophy, making it a unique insight into his beliefs and hopes for the foundation of a communist society.

This major translation conveys the clarity and intensity of Marx’s original notebooks, while the foreword considers the work in relation to Hegelian philosophy and contemporary socio-political theory.
—from the back cover]]> 904 Karl Marx 0140445757 Light 0 4.27 1857 Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy
author: Karl Marx
name: Light
average rating: 4.27
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]]> <![CDATA[Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 3]]> 80468 1.The conversion of Surplus Value into Profit & the rate of Surplus Value into the rate of Profit
2.Conversion of Profit into Average Profit
3.The Law of the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall
4.Conversion of Commodity Capital & Money Capital into Commercial Capital & Money-Dealing (Merchant's) Capital
5.Division of Profit Into Interest & Profit of Enterprise, Interest Bearing Capital
6.Transformation of Surplus-Profit into Ground Rent
7.Revenues & Their Sources
The work is best known today for part 3, which in summary says that as the organic fixed capital requirements of production rise as a result of advancements in production generally, the rate of profit tends to fall. This result, which orthodox Marxists believe is a principal contradictory characteristic leading to an inevitable collapse of the capitalist order, was held, as a result of various contradictions in the capitalist mode of production, result in crises whose resolution necessitates the emergence of an entirely new mode of production as the culmination of the same historical dialectic that led to the emergence of capitalism from prior forms.]]> 1088 Karl Marx 0140445706 Light 0 4.20 1894 Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 3
author: Karl Marx
name: Light
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1894
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]]> <![CDATA[Capital: Critique of Political Economy, Vol 2]]> 20573864 601 Karl Marx 0141913290 Light 0 4.16 1887 Capital: Critique of Political Economy, Vol 2
author: Karl Marx
name: Light
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book published: 1887
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]]> <![CDATA[Capital: A Critique of Political Economy Volume 1]]> 325785 Capital, one of Marx's major and most influential works, was the product of thirty years close study of the capitalist mode of production in England, the most advanced industrial society of his day. This new translation of Volume One, the only volume to be completed and edited by Marx himself, avoids some of the mistakes that have marred earlier versions and seeks to do justice to the literary qualities of the work. The introduction is by Ernest Mandel, author of Late Capitalism, one of the only comprehensive attempts to develop the theoretical legacy of Capital.]]> 1152 Karl Marx 0140445684 Light 0 4.28 1867 Capital: A Critique of Political Economy Volume 1
author: Karl Marx
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average rating: 4.28
book published: 1867
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]]> Critique of the Gotha Program 33013497 116 Karl Marx Light 0 4.50 1875 Critique of the Gotha Program
author: Karl Marx
name: Light
average rating: 4.50
book published: 1875
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]]> The Communist Manifesto 30474 The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels' revolutionary 1848 summons to the working classes, is one of the most influential political theories ever formulated. After four years of collaboration, the authors produced this incisive account of their idea of Communism, in which they envisage a society without classes, private property, or a state. They argue that increasing exploitation of industrial workers will eventually lead to a revolution in which capitalism is overthrown. Their vision transformed the world irrevocably, and remains relevant as a depiction of global capitalism today.]]> 288 Karl Marx 0140447571 Light 0 3.67 1848 The Communist Manifesto
author: Karl Marx
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average rating: 3.67
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]]> <![CDATA[The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (Penguin Classics)]]> 7222268 236 Friedrich Engels 0141191112 Light 0 3.91 1884 The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (Penguin Classics)
author: Friedrich Engels
name: Light
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1884
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]]> <![CDATA[Wage-Labour and Capital / Value, Price and Profit]]> 925084 Wage-Labour and Capital and Value, Price and Profit have served as popular introductions to the study of political economy, each complementing the other. The first is based on lectures delivered by Marx before the German Workingmen's Club of Brussels in 1847, the second is an address by Marx before two sessions of the General Council of the First International in London in 1865. Both classics are included in this volume.]]> 110 Karl Marx 0717804704 Light 0 4.37 1849 Wage-Labour and Capital / Value, Price and Profit
author: Karl Marx
name: Light
average rating: 4.37
book published: 1849
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]]> <![CDATA[Socialism: Utopian and Scientific]]> 54853126
It explores the difference between early socialists (considered utopian) and the modern scientific socialists embodied in Karl Marx. The message of this book is that modern socialism is not an idealistic dream , but has in fact been arrived at after a careful analysis of reality and history which shows that communism will naturally and inevitably follow after capitalism .

In Engel's analysis, socialism is not simply a doctrine, but is in fact a scientific reality, an economic shift that grows unavoidably out of large-scale capitalist industry and its consequences. "Mr. Engel's book has the merit of greatly simplifying Marx's statement of the case for socialism." - The Dial "The body of this book is still fresh and striking." - Daily Chronicle "The author's wit is as keen as his philosophy, and the volume possesses literary style as well as historical learning." - The Outlook]]> 85 Friedrich Engels Light 0 4.21 1880 Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
author: Friedrich Engels
name: Light
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1880
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]]> Why Socialism? 12007777 12 Albert Einstein Light 0 4.14 1949 Why Socialism?
author: Albert Einstein
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average rating: 4.14
book published: 1949
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]]> <![CDATA[The Condition of the Working Class in England]]> 6606869 320 Friedrich Engels 0141191104 Light 0 4.06 1845 The Condition of the Working Class in England
author: Friedrich Engels
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]]> A Spectre, Haunting 70611502
Few written works can so confidently claim to have shaped the course of history as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels's Manifesto of the Communist Party . Since first rattling the gates of the ruling order in 1848, this incendiary pamphlet has never ceased providing fuel for the fire in the hearts of those who dream of a better world. Nor has it stopped haunting the nightmares of those who sit atop the vastly unequal social system it condemns.

In this strikingly imaginative introduction, China Miéville provides readers with a guide to understanding the Manifesto and the many specters it has conjured. Through his unique and unorthodox reading, Miéville offers a spirited defense of the enduring relevance of Marx and Engels� ideas.

Presented along with the full text of the Communist Manifesto , Miéville's guide has something to offer first-time readers, revolutionary partisans, and even the most hard-nosed skeptics.]]> 304 China Miéville 1642598933 Light 0 3.00 2022 A Spectre, Haunting
author: China Miéville
name: Light
average rating: 3.00
book published: 2022
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]]> <![CDATA[The Wealth of (Some) Nations: Imperialism and the Mechanics of Value Transfer]]> 43015121 Cope makes the controversial claim that it is because of these conditions that workers in rich countries benefit from higher incomes and welfare systems with public health, education, pensions, and social security. As a result, the internationalism of populations in the Global North is weakened and transnational solidarity is compromised. The only way forward, Cope argues is through a renewed anti-imperialist politics rooted in a firm commitment to a radical labor internationalism.
]]> 240 Zak Cope 0745338852 Light 0 to-read 4.16 The Wealth of (Some) Nations: Imperialism and the Mechanics of Value Transfer
author: Zak Cope
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]]> The Wealth of Nations 1107746 Introduction by Robert Reich
Commentary by R. H. Campbell and A. S. Skinner

Adam Smith’s masterpiece, first published in 1776, is the foundation of modern economic thought and remains the single most important account of the rise of, and the principles behind, modern capitalism. Written in clear and incisive prose, The Wealth of Nations articulates the concepts indispensable to an understanding of contemporary society; and Robert Reich’s Introduction both clarifies Smith’s analyses and illuminates his overall relevance to the world in which we live. As Reich writes, “Smith’s mind ranged over issues as fresh and topical today as they were in the late eighteenth century—jobs, wages, politics, government, trade, education, business, and ethics.�

Includes a Modern Library Reading Group Guide





From the Trade Paperback edition.]]> 1131 Adam Smith 0679424733 Light 0 4.01 1776 The Wealth of Nations
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]]> <![CDATA[The Theory of Moral Sentiments (Penguin Classics)]]> 6688588
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust theseries to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-datetranslations by award-winning translators.]]> 494 Adam Smith 0143105922 Light 0 4.13 1759 The Theory of Moral Sentiments (Penguin Classics)
author: Adam Smith
name: Light
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1759
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]]> The Worldly Philosophers 82120 The bestselling classic that examines the history of economic thought from Adam Smith to Karl Marx—“all the economic lore most general readers conceivably could want to know, served up with a flourish� (The New York Times).

The Worldly Philosophers not only enables us to see more deeply into our history but helps us better understand our own times. In this seventh edition, Robert L. Heilbroner provides a new theme that connects thinkers as diverse as Adam Smith and Karl Marx. The theme is the common focus of their highly varied ideas—namely, the search to understand how a capitalist society works. It is a focus never more needed than in this age of confusing economic headlines.

In a bold new concluding chapter entitled “The End of the Worldly Philosophy?� Heilbroner reminds us that the word “end� refers to both the purpose and limits of economics. This chapter conveys a concern that today’s increasingly “scientific� economics may overlook fundamental social and political issues that are central to economics. Thus, unlike its predecessors, this new edition provides not just an indispensable illumination of our past but a call to action for our future.]]> 368 Robert L. Heilbroner 068486214X Light 0 4.16 1953 The Worldly Philosophers
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name: Light
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1953
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]]> <![CDATA[The Undercover Economist Strikes Back: How to Run--or Ruin--an Economy]]> 22529148 A provocative and lively exploration of the increasingly important world of macroeconomics, by the author of the bestselling The Undercover Economist.

Thanks to the worldwide financial upheaval, economics is no longer a topic we can ignore. From politicians to hedge fund managers to middle-class IRA holders, everyone must pay attention to how and why the global economy works the way it does.

Enter Financial Times columnist and bestselling author Tim Harford. In this new book that demystifies macroeconomics, Harford strips away the spin, the hype, and the jargon to reveal the truth about how the world’s economy actually works. With the wit of a raconteur and the clear grasp of an expert, Harford explains what’s really happening beyond today’s headlines, why all of us should care, and what we can do about it to understand it better.
]]> 272 Tim Harford 159463291X Light 0 3.92 2013 The Undercover Economist Strikes Back: How to Run--or Ruin--an Economy
author: Tim Harford
name: Light
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2013
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]]> <![CDATA[The Armchair Economist: Economics and Everyday Life]]> 14762446 -- Joe Queenan, The Wall Street Journal

The Armchair Economist is a wonderful little book, written by someone for whom English is a first (and beloved) language, and it contains not a single graph or equation...Landsburg presents fascinating concepts in a form easily accessible to noneconomists.

-- Erik M. Jensen, The Cleveland Plain Dealer

...enormous fun from its opening page...Landsburg has done something extraordinary: He has expounded basic economic principles with wit and verve.

-- Dan Seligman, Fortune

]]> 316 Steven E. Landsburg 1471101312 Light 0 3.76 1993 The Armchair Economist: Economics and Everyday Life
author: Steven E. Landsburg
name: Light
average rating: 3.76
book published: 1993
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]]> <![CDATA[Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia]]> 6482902 When it first appeared in France, Anti-Oedipus was hailed as a masterpiece by some and "a work of heretical madness" by others. In it, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari set forth the following theory: Western society's innate herd instinct has allowed the government, the media and even the principles of economics to take advantage of each person's unwillingness to be cut off from the group. What's more, those who suffer from mental disorders may not be insane, but could be individuals in the purest sense, because they are by nature isolated from society. More than twenty-five years after its original publication, Anti-Oedipus still stands as a controversial contribution to a much-needed dialog on the nature of free thinking.]]> 432 Gilles Deleuze 0143105825 Light 0 4.19 1972 Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia
author: Gilles Deleuze
name: Light
average rating: 4.19
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]]> Being and Nothingness 10033 Being & Nothingness is without doubt one of the most significant philosophical books of the 20th century. The central work by one of the century's most influential thinkers, it altered the course of western philosophy. Its revolutionary approach challenged all previous assumptions about the individual's relationship with the world. Known as 'the Bible of existentialism', its impact on culture & literature was immediate & was felt worldwide, from the absurdist drama of Samuel Beckett to the soul-searching cries of the Beat poets.
Being & Nothingness is one of those rare books whose influence has affected the mindset of subsequent generations. Seventy years after its 1st publication, its message remains as potent as ever--challenging readers to confront the fundamental dilemmas of human freedom, choice, responsibility & action.]]> 688 Jean-Paul Sartre 0415278481 Light 0 4.00 1943 Being and Nothingness
author: Jean-Paul Sartre
name: Light
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]]> <![CDATA[Being and Time (Harper Perennial Modern Thought)]]> 3791745 This first paperback edition of John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson's definitive translation also features a new foreword by Heidegger scholar Taylor Carman.

"What is the meaning of being?" This is the central question of Martin Heidegger's profoundly important work, in which the great philosopher seeks to explain the basic problems of existence. A central influence on later philosophy, literature, art, and criticism—as well as existentialism and much of postmodern thought�Being and Timeforever changed the intellectual map of the modern world. As Richard Rorty wrote in theNew York Times Book Review, "You cannot read most of the important thinkers of recent times without taking Heidegger's thought into account."]]> 608 Martin Heidegger 0061575593 Light 0 4.22 1927 Being and Time (Harper Perennial Modern Thought)
author: Martin Heidegger
name: Light
average rating: 4.22
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]]> <![CDATA[Relativity: The Special and the General Theory]]> 15852 An accesible version of Einstein's masterpiece of theory, written by the genius himself

According to Einstein himself, this book is intended "to give an exact insight into the theory of Relativity to those readers who, from a general scientific and philosophical point of view, are interested in the theory, but who are not conversant with the mathematical apparatus of theoretical physics." When he wrote the book in 1916, Einstein's name was scarcely known outside the physics institutes. Having just completed his masterpiece, The General Theory of Relativity—which provided a brand-new theory of gravity and promised a new perspective on the cosmos as a whole—he set out at once to share his excitement with as wide a public as possible in this popular and accessible book.

Here published for the first time as a Penguin Classic, this edition of Relativity features a new introduction by bestselling science author Nigel Calder.]]> 130 Albert Einstein 0143039822 Light 0 4.21 1916 Relativity: The Special and the General Theory
author: Albert Einstein
name: Light
average rating: 4.21
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]]> The God Delusion 747213 463 Richard Dawkins 0618918248 Light 0 4.04 2006 The God Delusion
author: Richard Dawkins
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average rating: 4.04
book published: 2006
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]]> The Will to Power 31277752 New to Penguin Classics, The Will to Power contains some of Nietzsche's most fascinating and combative writings on nihilism, metaphysics and the future of Europe.

Assembled by Nietzsche's sister after his death, The Will to Power is a collection of the philosopher's reflections and theories taken from his unpublished notebooks. Covering topics such as nihilism, Christianity, morality and the famous 'will to power', the book was controversially presented as Nietzsche's all-but-completed magnum opus containing his philosophical system. Including some of his most interesting metaphysical and epistemological thoughts, as well as some of his most disturbing ethical and political comments, the book would prove to have a significant influence on Nietzsche's contentious reception in the twentieth century.]]> 648 Friedrich Nietzsche 0141195355 Light 0 4.11 1901 The Will to Power
author: Friedrich Nietzsche
name: Light
average rating: 4.11
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]]> <![CDATA[The Twilight of the Idols and the Anti-Christ: or How to Philosophize with a Hammer (Penguin Classics)]]> 75017815 208 Friedrich Nietzsche Light 0 4.33 1889 The Twilight of the Idols and the Anti-Christ: or How to Philosophize with a Hammer (Penguin Classics)
author: Friedrich Nietzsche
name: Light
average rating: 4.33
book published: 1889
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]]> <![CDATA[On the Genealogy of Morals (Penguin Classics)]]> 18079618 For the first time in Penguin Classics: Nietzsche’s accessible exploration of key ideas in his landmark Beyond Good and Evil—in a lucid new translation

Friedrich Nietzsche claimed that the purpose of On the Genealogy of Morals was to call attention to his previous writings. But in fact the book does much more than that, elucidating and expanding on the cryptic aphorisms of Beyond Good and Evil, and presenting a coherent discussion of morality in a work that is more accessible than much of his previous writings.]]> 167 Friedrich Nietzsche 0141195371 Light 0 4.05 1887 On the Genealogy of Morals (Penguin Classics)
author: Friedrich Nietzsche
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average rating: 4.05
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]]> Beyond Good and Evil 12321 Beyond Good and Evil is translated from the German by R.J. Hollingdale with an introduction by Michael Tanner in Penguin Classics.

Beyond Good and Evil confirmed Nietzsche's position as the towering European philosopher of his age. The work dramatically rejects the tradition of Western thought with its notions of truth and God, good and evil. Nietzsche demonstrates that the Christian world is steeped in a false piety and infected with a 'slave morality'. With wit and energy, he turns from this critique to a philosophy that celebrates the present and demands that the individual imposes their own 'will to power' upon the world.

This edition includes a commentary on the text by the translator and Michael Tanner's introduction, which explains some of the more abstract passages in Beyond Good and Evil.

Frederich Nietzsche (1844-1900) became the chair of classical philology at Basel University at the age of 24 until his bad health forced him to retire in 1879. He divorced himself from society until his final collapse in 1899 when he became insane. A powerfully original thinker, Nietzsche's influence on subsequent writers, such as George Bernard Shaw, D.H. Lawrence, Thomas Mann and Jean-Paul Sartre, was considerable.

If you enjoyed Beyond Good and Evil you might like Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, also available in Penguin Classics.

"One of the greatest books of a very great thinker." —Michael Tanner]]> 240 Friedrich Nietzsche 014044923X Light 0 4.05 1886 Beyond Good and Evil
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]]> Thus Spoke Zarathustra 380285 Friedrich Nietzsche’s most accessible and influential philosophical work, misquoted, misrepresented, brilliantly original and enormously influential

Nietzsche was one of the most revolutionary and subversive thinkers in Western philosophy, and Thus Spoke Zarathustra remains his most famous and influential work. It describes how the ancient Persian prophet Zarathustra descends from his solitude in the mountains to tell the world that God is dead and that the Superman, the human embodiment of divinity, is his successor. Nietzsche’s utterance ‘God is dead�, his insistence that the meaning of life is to be found in purely human terms, and his doctrine of the Superman and the will to power were all later seized upon and unrecognisably twisted by, among others, Nazi intellectuals. With blazing intensity and poetic brilliance, Nietzsche argues that the meaning of existence is not to be found in religious pieties or meek submission to authority, but in an all-powerful life force: passionate, chaotic and free.]]> 343 Friedrich Nietzsche 0140441182 Light 0 3.94 1883 Thus Spoke Zarathustra
author: Friedrich Nietzsche
name: Light
average rating: 3.94
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]]> <![CDATA[The Joyous Science (Penguin Classics)]]> 39074568 The Joyous Science is a liberating voyage of discovery as Nietzsche's realization that 'God is dead' and his critique of morality, the arts and modernity give way to an exhilarating doctrine of self-emancipation and the concept of eternal recurrence. Here is Nietzsche at his most personal and affirmative; in his words, this is a book of 'exuberance, restlessness, contrariety and April showers'. With its unique voice and style, its playful combination of poetry and prose, and its invigorating quest for self-emancipation, The Joyous Science is a literary tour de force and quite possibly Nietzsche's best book.]]> 368 Friedrich Nietzsche 0141195398 Light 0 4.25 1882 The Joyous Science (Penguin Classics)
author: Friedrich Nietzsche
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]]> The Birth of Tragedy 2823 The Birth of Tragedy has become a key text in European culture and in literary criticism.]]> 121 Friedrich Nietzsche 0140433392 Light 0 4.01 1871 The Birth of Tragedy
author: Friedrich Nietzsche
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]]> Critique of Pure Reason 18291 'The purpose of this critique of pure speculative reason consists in the attempt to change the old procedure of metaphysics and to bring about a complete revolution'

Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (1781) is the central text of modern philosophy. It presents a profound and challenging investigation into the nature of human reason, its knowledge and its illusions. Reason, Kant argues, is the seat of certain concepts that precede experience and make it possible, but we are not therefore entitled to draw conclusions about the natural world from these concepts. The Critique brings together the two opposing schools of philosophy: rationalism, which grounds all our knowledge in reason, and empiricism, which traces all our knowledge to experience. Kant's transcendental idealism indicates a third way that goes far beyond these alternatives.

Marcus Weigelt's lucid re-working of Max Müller's classic translation makes the Critique accessible to a new generation of readers. His informative introduction places the work in context and elucidates Kant's main arguments. This edition also contains a bibliography and explanatory notes.]]> 708 Immanuel Kant 0140447474 Light 0 4.11 1781 Critique of Pure Reason
author: Immanuel Kant
name: Light
average rating: 4.11
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]]> <![CDATA[Reveries of the Solitary Walker]]> 722065 Reveries.

In the two years before his death in 1778, Jean-Jacques Rousseau composed the ten meditations of Reveries of the Solitary Walker. Combining philosophical argument with amusing anecdotes and lyrical desriptive passages, they record the great French writer's sense of isolation and alienation from a world which he felt had rejected his work. As he wanders around Paris, gazing at plants and day-dreaming, Rousseau looks back over his life in order to justify his actions and to elaborate on his ideal of a well-structured society fit for the noble and solitary natural man.]]> 155 Jean-Jacques Rousseau 0140443630 Light 0 3.68 1782 Reveries of the Solitary Walker
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name: Light
average rating: 3.68
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]]> The Confessions 673840 The Confessions is an astonishing work of acute psychological insight. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78) argued passionately against the inequality he believed to be intrinsic to civilized society. In his Confessions he relives the first fifty-three years of his radical life with vivid immediacy - from his earliest years, where we can see the source of his belief in the innocence of childhood, through the development of his philosophical and political ideas, his struggle against the French authorities and exile from France following the publication of Émile. Depicting a life of adventure, persecution, paranoia, and brilliant achievement, The Confessions is a landmark work by one of the greatest thinkers of the Enlightenment, which was a direct influence upon the work of Proust, Goethe and Tolstoy among others.]]> 608 Jean-Jacques Rousseau 014044033X Light 0 3.46 1773 The Confessions
author: Jean-Jacques Rousseau
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average rating: 3.46
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]]> The Social Contract 763942


These are the famous opening words of a treatise that has not ceased to stir vigorous debate since its first publication in 1762. Rejecting the view that anyone has a natural right to wield authority over others, Rousseau argues instead for a pact, or ‘social contract�, that should exist between all the citizens of a state and that should be the source of sovereign power. From this fundamental premise, he goes on to consider issues of liberty and law, freedom and justice, arriving at a view of society that has seemed to some a blueprint for totalitarianism, to others a declaration of democratic principles.



In his introduction, Maurice Cranston examines the historical and political ideas that influenced Rousseau and places The Social Contract against a backdrop of Rousseau’s remarkable personality and life.]]> 188 Jean-Jacques Rousseau 0140442014 Light 0 3.53 1762 The Social Contract
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]]> A Discourse on Inequality 849579 Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, a strikingly original inquiry into much-explored issues of 18th-century (and subsequent) philosophy: human nature and the best form of government.

Rousseau takes an innovative approach by introducing a "hypothetical history" that presents a theoretical view of people in a pre-social condition and the ensuing effects of civilization. In his sweeping account of humanity's social and political development, the author develops a theory of human evolution that prefigures Darwinian thought and encompasses aspects of ethics, sociology, and epistemology. He concludes that people are inevitably corrupt as a result of both natural (or physical) inequalities and moral (or political) inequalities.

One of the most influential works of the Enlightenment, the Discourse on the Origin of Inequality offers a thought-provoking account of society's origins and a keen criticism of unequal modern political institutions.]]> 192 Jean-Jacques Rousseau 0140444394 Light 0 3.65 1755 A Discourse on Inequality
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]]> Ethics 205218 Ethics is undoubtedly Spinoza's greatest work—an elegant, fully cohesive cosmology derived from first principles, providing a coherent picture of reality, and a guide to the meaning of an ethical life. Following a logical step-by-step format, it defines in turn the nature of God, the mind, the emotions, human bondage to the emotions, and the power of understanding—moving from a consideration of the eternal, to speculate upon humanity's place in the natural order, the nature of freedom and the path to attainable happiness. A powerful work of elegant simplicity, the Ethics is a brilliantly insightful consideration of the possibility of redemption through intense thought and philosophical reflection. The Ethics is presented in the standard translation of the work by Edwin Curley. This edition also includes an introduction by Stuart Hampshire, outlining Spinoza's philosophy and placing it in context.]]> 186 Baruch Spinoza 0140435719 Light 0 4.10 1677 Ethics
author: Baruch Spinoza
name: Light
average rating: 4.10
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]]> Leviathan 91953 'The life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short'

Written during the chaos of the English Civil War, Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan asks how, in a world of violence and horror, can we stop ourselves from descending into anarchy? Hobbes' case for a 'common-wealth' under a powerful sovereign - or 'Leviathan' - to enforce security and the rule of law, shocked his contemporaries, and his book was publicly burnt for sedition the moment it was published. But his penetrating work of political philosophy - now fully revised and with a new introduction for this edition - opened up questions about the nature of statecraft and society that influenced governments across the world.]]> 736 Thomas Hobbes 0140431950 Light 0 3.71 1651 Leviathan
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name: Light
average rating: 3.71
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]]> Utopia 18414 Utopia, Thomas More imagines a perfect island nation where thousands live in peace and harmony, men and women are both educated, and all property is communal. Through dialogue and correspondence between the protagonist Raphael Hythloday and his friends and contemporaries, More explores the theories behind war, political disagreements, social quarrels, and wealth distribution and imagines the day-to-day lives of those citizens enjoying freedom from fear, oppression, violence, and suffering. Originally written in Latin, this vision of an ideal world is also a scathing satire of Europe in the sixteenth century and has been hugely influential since publication, shaping utopian fiction even today.]]> 113 Thomas More 0140449108 Light 0 3.53 1516 Utopia
author: Thomas More
name: Light
average rating: 3.53
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]]> The Prince 393134 'One must be a fox in order to recognise traps, and a lion to frighten off wolves'

The Prince shocked Europe on publication with its advocacy of ruthless tactics for gaming absolute power and its abandonment of conventional morality. Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527) came to be regarded by some as an agent of the Devil and his name taken for the intriguer 'Machevill' of Jacobean tragedy. For his treatise on statecraft Machiavelli drew upon his own experience of office under the turbulent Florentine republic, rejecting traditional values of political theory and recognising the complicated, transient nature of political life. Concerned not with lofty ideals but with a regime that would last, The Prince has become the bible of realpolitik, and still retains its power to alarm and to instruct.

In this edition Machiavelli's tough-minded and pragmatic Italian is preserved in George Bull's clear, unambiguous translation, while Anthony Grafton's introduction depicts Machiavelli's world of power struggles and intrigue, and discusses his role as a political teacher of Europe.]]> 106 Niccolò Machiavelli 0140449159 Light 0 3.68 1513 The Prince
author: Niccolò Machiavelli
name: Light
average rating: 3.68
book published: 1513
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]]> <![CDATA[Meditations: The Annotated Edition]]> 54817586 The definitive annotated translation of Marcus Aurelius's Meditations

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121-180 CE) was the sixteenth emperor of Rome -- and by far the most powerful man in the world. Yet he was also an intensely private person, with a rich interior life and one of the wisest minds of his generation. He collected his thoughts in notebooks, gems that have come to be called his Meditations. Never intended for publication, the work has proved an inexhaustible source of wisdom and one of the most important Stoic texts of all time. In often passionate language, the entries range from one-line aphorisms to essays, from profundity to bitterness.

This annotated edition offers the definitive translation of this classic and much beloved text, with copious notes from world-renowned classics expert Robin Waterfield. It illuminates one of the greatest works of popular philosophy for new readers and enriches the understanding of even the most devoted Stoic.]]> 325 Marcus Aurelius 1541673859 Light 0 4.46 180 Meditations: The Annotated Edition
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name: Light
average rating: 4.46
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]]> <![CDATA[Discourses and Selected Writings]]> 4143812 Enchiridion, a manual of his main ideas, and the fragments collected here, The Discourses argue that happiness lies in learning to perceive exactly what is in our power to change and what is not, and in embracing our fate to live in harmony with god and nature. In this personal, practical guide to the ethics of Stoicism and moral self-improvement, Epictetus tackles questions of freedom and imprisonment, illness and fear, family, friendship and love, and leaves an intriguing document of daily life in the classical world.

In the introduction that accompanies his lively new translation, Robert Dobbin discusses Epictetus' life, his place in the Stoic tradition, his influence on world philosophies and his relevance in the modern day. This edition also includes a bibliography, notes and a glossary of names.]]> 276 Epictetus 0140449469 Light 0 4.41 108 Discourses and Selected Writings
author: Epictetus
name: Light
average rating: 4.41
book published: 108
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]]> Letters from a Stoic 97411 No man can live a happy life, or even a supportable life, without the study of wisdom

Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 BC-AD 65) is one of the most famous Roman philosophers. Instrumental in guiding the Roman Empire under emperor Nero, Seneca influenced him from a young age with his Stoic principles. Later in life, he wrote Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium, or Letters from a Stoic, detailing these principles in full.

Seneca’s letters read like a diary or a handbook of philosophical meditations. Often beginning with observations on daily life, the letters focus on many traditional themes of Stoic philosophy, such as the contempt of death, the value of friendship, and virtue as the supreme good.

Using Gummere’s translation from the early twentieth century, this selection of Seneca’s letters shows his belief in the austere, ethical ideals of Stoicism � teachings we can still learn from today.]]> 254 Seneca 0140442103 Light 0 4.33 64 Letters from a Stoic
author: Seneca
name: Light
average rating: 4.33
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]]> The Analects 27297
The Analects are a collection of Confucius’s sayings brought together by his pupils shortly after his death in 497 BC. Together they express a philosophy, or a moral code, by which Confucius, one of the most humane thinkers of all time, believed everyone should live. Upholding the ideals of wisdom, self-knowledge, courage and love of one’s fellow man, he argued that the pursuit of virtue should be every individual’s supreme goal. And, while following the Way, or the truth, might not result in immediate or material gain, Confucius showed that it could nevertheless bring its own powerful and lasting spiritual rewards.

This edition contains a detailed introduction exploring the concepts of the original work, a bibliography and glossary and appendices on Confucius himself, The Analects and the disciples who compiled them.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.]]> 249 Confucius 0140443487 Light 0 3.84 -475 The Analects
author: Confucius
name: Light
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