Tacitus (AD c.55-117), a Roman senator of the 2nd Century AD and famed historian, has written a brilliant year-by-year account of the Roman Empire from 14 AD to 66 AD. The Annals is without a doubt the most important book ever written on Im...

For nearly 500 years, Machiavelli's observations on Realpolitik have shocked and appalled the timid and romantic, and for many his name was equivalent to the devil's own. Yet, The Prince was the first attempt to write of the world of politi...

First published in 1516, Thomas More's Utopia is one of the most important works of European humanism. Through the voice of the mysterious traveler Raphael Hythloday, More describes a pagan, communist city-state governed by reason. Addressi...

Voltaire wrote Candide at the age of sixty-five as a response, in the form of satirical mockery, to the optimism of Leibniz. "Everything is for the best in the best of worlds..." said the optimists. In Candide, both optimism and pessimism a...

Revolutionary in its own time and controversial to this day, this work is a permanent classic of political theory and a key source of democratic belief. Rousseau's concepts of "the general will" as a mode of self-interest uniting for a comm...

Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in 1852, the novel "helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War", according to Will Kaufman. Uncle Tom's Cabin was t...

Karl Marx and Frederich Engels' "Manifesto of the Communist Party" (its original title) was written as a pamphlet for the International Workingmen's Association. At the time the association was the most leftward in Europe, and involved itse...

Hitler, although extremely evil, was possibly one of the best orators of all time. He could move crowds like no one else with his powerful speeches and yet virtually nothing he said is still quoted today. Why? Because it was not what Hitler...

"George Orwell's 1945 satire on the perils of Stalinism has proved magnificently long-lived as a parable about totalitarianism anywhere - and has given the world at least one immortal phrase: 'Some are more equal than others'."...

George Orwell's prophetic, nightmarish vision of "Negative Utopia" is timelier than ever-and its warnings more powerful. "It is probable that no other work of this generation has made us desire freedom more earnestly or loathe tyranny wi...

The New Golden Rule: Community and Morality in a Democratic Society : A leading communitarian thinker, sociologist Etzioni contends Americans have overemphasized individual rights in recent years. In his searching treatise, he seeks to rest...