The Time Traveler first steps out of his magnificent time-transport machine in the year 802,700—more than 800,000 years beyond his own era. The brave explorer finds himself on a slowly dying Earth populated by a race of slender pacifists called the Eloi and decides to study this lush land of flower people before returning to his own age. These pacifists, he discovers, have built their wealth on the backs of a slave class forced to live below ground—the Morlocks. As the conflict between the...

This delightful tale of thwarted ambition and forbidden love follows the adventures and fortunes of an endearing young rogue, Frank Softly. Originally appearing serialized in Household Words in 1859, the rogue is one of Collins' most richly comic creations.Propelled into society by his ever-hopeful father, Frank is introduced to a variety of professions in order to make his fortune. Not industrious by nature, Frank finds working life a challenge, and by his twenty-fifth bi...

This is an ideal introduction to the ideas of Eric Voegelin, a man whom many regard as the greatest thinker of our time. Here we encounter the stages in the development of his unique philosophy of consciousness; his key intellectual breakthroughs; his theory of history; and his diagnosis of the political ills of the modern age.The book also provides a veritable catalog of the thinkers who formed the intellectual foundation of the twentieth century. Voegelin’s personal recollections...

“How can men best live together?” Twenty-three centuries after its compilation, Politics still has much to contribute to this central question of political science. Aristotle’s thorough and carefully argued analysis covers a huge range of political issues in the effort to establish which types of constitution are best, both ideally and in particular circumstances, and how they may be maintained.Like his predecessor, Plato, Aristotle believed that the ideal constitution sho...

During the 1930s at Oxford, C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Charles Williams—remarkable friends, writers, and scholars—met regularly to discuss philosophy and literature and to read aloud from their own works in progress. Calling themselves the Inklings, their circle grew. It was in this company that such classics as The Lord of the Rings, The Screwtape Letters, and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe first found an audience.Author Humphrey Carpenter...

Challenged by an expert who said it couldn’t be done, Joshua Slocum, a fearless New England sea captain, set out in April 1895 to prove that a man could sail alone around the world. A little over three years and forty-six thousand miles later, the proof was complete. This is Slocum’s own account of his remarkable adventures during the historic voyage of the Spray.Whether Slocum was more accomplished as a writer or sailor is hard to say. His writing style is fast paced, wit...

Considered one of the finest historical works in the English language, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is lauded for its graceful, elegant prose style as much as for its epic scope. Remarkably accurate for its day, Gibbon's treatise holds a high place in the history of literature and remains an enduring subject of study.Gibbon's monumental work traces the history of more than thirteen centuries, covering the great events as well as the general historical progressi...

Herodotus is not only the father of the art and the science of historical writing but also one of the Western tradition’s most compelling storytellers. His Histories is regarded as one of the seminal works of history in Western literature. He wrote these accounts of the fifth-century-BC wars between the Greeks and Persians with a continuous awareness of the mythic and the wonderful, while laying bare the intricate human entanglements at their core. This volume is one of the first ...

Written between AD 413 and 426, The City of God is one of the great cornerstones in the history of Christian thought, a book vital to understanding modern Western society. Augustine originally intended it to be an apology for Christianity against the accusation that the Church was responsible for the decline of the Roman Empire. Indeed, Augustine produced a great amount of evidence to prove that paganism was responsible for this event. However, by the time the work was finished, t...

Considered one of the finest historical works in the English language, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is lauded for its graceful, elegant prose style as much as for its grand scope and considerable accuracy. It is a remarkable survey of what the author calls "the greatest and, perhaps, most awful scene in the history of mankind."This third volume of Gibbon's masterpiece covers the years 1185 to 1453 and explores the rise of Islam, the Crusades, the invention of g...

For almost four desperate years between 1939 and 1943, British and American navies fought a savage, losing battle against German submarine wolf packs. The Allies might never have turned the tide of that historic battle without an intelligence coup. The race to break the German U-boat codes is one of the last great untold stories of World War II.David Kahn, the world’s leading historian of cryptology, brings to life this tense, behind-the-scenes drama for the first time. Seizing...

In 1787, William Bligh, commander of the Bounty, sailed under Captain Cook on a voyage to Tahiti to collect plants of the breadfruit tree, with a view to acclimatizing the species to the West Indies. During their six-month stay on the island, his men became completely demoralized and mutinied on the return voyage. But a resentful crew, coupled with ravaging storms and ruthless savages, proved to be merely stages leading up to the anxiety-charged ordeal to come. Bligh, along with e...