Spanning eighty captivating hours, Durant Masterworks curates four of Will Durant’s most celebrated works into a single, thematically rich portrait of Western thought from its origins to the modern age.This anthology traces the evolution of Western thought from ancient philosophy through medieval faith, early modern conflict, and the rise of England as a global power. Durant’s storytelling is vivid, engaging, and deeply human, bringing history’s greatest i...

Just as authors create books, books create authors — and these essays by thirty-one writers for young people offer a fascinating glimpse at the books that inspired them the most.What if you could look inside your favorite authors’ heads and see the book that led them to become who they are today? What was the book that made them fall in love, or made them understand something for the first time? What was the book that made them feel challenged in ways they never kn...

A collection of 32 personal stories.The Book That Made Me is a celebration of the books that influenced some of the most acclaimed authors from Australia and the world. Edited by Judith Ridge, it features non-fiction stories from 32 inspiring and award-winning authors including Markus Zusak, Jaclyn Moriarty, Shaun Tan, Mal Peet, Ambelin Kwaymullina, Simon French, Alison Croggon, Fiona Wood, Bernard Beckett, Ursula Dubosarsky, Rachael Craw, Sue Lawson, Benj...

The mutiny on the Nautilus is over, but the man behind it, the mysterious Robur, is still at large. In the middle of his search for the unknown, Phileas Fogg receives an invitation from an old acquaintance: engineer Phil Evans asks him to come to the Whedon Institute in the United States. But when they arrive, the supposed invitation turns out to be a trap. The trapper: Robur! The manically ingenious inventor abducts the world travellers onto a gigantic airship. With its help, he plans an ...

Philosophy has often seemed like the castor oil of the disciplines: healthy, but never pleasurable, and best when swallowed quickly and forgotten.Although this view is understandable, it is regrettable. It isolates intelligent readers from some of the most important thought of Western civilization, much of which underlies our understanding of reality, whether we know it or not.Will Durant’s classic Story of Philosophy is a welcome remedy for this m...

The Story of Philosophy was first published in 1926, with modest expectations that were soon outgrown. In a few years, it sold 2 million copies. To this day, it is still capturing new readers in America and has found many abroad in translations into Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, German, French, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Serbo-Croatian, Spanish, and Swedish.Durant provides an immensely astute, clear, and ...

The British Empire is unique in world history. How did this small island come to rule a full quarter of the globe? No other nation has matched this achievement.The British Empire evolved over centuries, but it began to blossom in its greatest age: the reigns of Queen Elizabeth I (from 1558 to 1603) and King James I (from 1603 to 1625). Despite bitter religious struggles within and threats from nations such as Spain without, this era not only sowed the seeds of the ...

This new edition of the bestselling guide contains a supplementary chapter, plus fully updated booklists.'No matter where they go, children lost in books will always find their way home.'Your child deserves the best reading teacher in the world. And the one person who will read more than anyone else to help your child learn to read... is you.In this clear and humour-filled guide, Paul Jennings cuts through the jargon and the controversies to show every parent ...

Fantasy has been an important and much-loved part of children's literature for hundreds of years, yet relatively little has been written about it. Children's Fantasy Literature traces the development of the tradition of the children's fantastic - fictions specifically written for children and fictions appropriated by them - from the sixteenth to the twenty-first century, examining the work of Lewis Carroll, L. Frank Baum, C. S. Lewis, Roald Dahl, J. K. Rowling and others from across the En...

Read for pleasure, for thrills, for escape, for ideas, for involvement. Read books that make you laugh and cry and wonder and think. Read for yourself and not for others. That's the focus of Right Book, Right Time - 500 great reads for teenagers.For all those voracious and eclectic young readers, here are over 500 fabulous books to choose from. There are quick reads, chunky books, demanding reads and tantalizing, innovative books with dazzling use of language. You'll find scary boo...