Classics

"You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel...Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade." —from If On A Winter's Night a Traveler.  Italo Calvino's stunning classic imagines a novel...

Written in Paris in the early 1950s, this book created instant controversy in its analysis of modern society that had allowed itself to be hypnotized by socio-political doctrines, and to accept totalitarian terror on the strength of a hypothetical future...

'How could such a book speak so powerfully to our present moment? The short answer is that we, too, live in dark times' -- Washington PostHannah Arendt's chilling analysis of the conditions that led to the Nazi and Soviet totalitarian regimes is a...

Erich Fromm sees right to the heart of our contradictory needs for community and for freedom like no other writer before or since. In Fear of Freedom, Fromm warns that the price of community is indeed high, and it is the individual who pays. Fascism and...

Tales of madness, alienation, and insight from a master of the short storyWard No. 6 and Other Stories 1892-1895 collects stories which show Anton Chekhov beginning to confront complex, ambiguous and often extreme emotions in his short fiction. These...

This collection of Chekhov's finest early writing reveals a young writer mastering the art of the short story. 'The Steppe', which established his reputation, is the unforgettable tale of a boy's journey to a new school in Kiev, travelling through...

Recorded in sacred Sanskrit texts, including the Rig Veda and the Mahabharata, Hindu Myths are thought to date back as far as the tenth century BCE. Here in these seventy-five seminal myths are the many incarnations of Vishnu, who saves mankind from...

Composed in the twelfth century in north-eastern Iran, Attar's great mystical poem is among the most significant of all works of Persian literature. A marvellous, allegorical rendering of the Islamic doctrine of Sufism - an esoteric system concerned with...

More than 100,000 entrepreneurs rely on this book.The National Science Foundation pays hundreds of startup teams each year to follow the process outlined in the book, and it's taught at Stanford, Berkeley, Columbia and more than 100 other leading...

(Available after 3-21 Days)First recorded 1500 years ago, but taking its origins from a far earlier oral tradition, the Pancatantra is ascribed by legend to the celebrated, half-mythical teacher Visnu Sarma. Asked by a great king to awaken the dulled...

With the emergence of democracy in the city-state of Athens in the years around 460 BC, public speaking became an essential skill for politicians in the Assemblies and Councils - and even for ordinary citizens in the courts of law. In response, the...

Composed between 800 and 950 AD, Narayana's Hitopadesa is one of the best-known of all works in Sanskrit literature. A fascinating collection of fables, maxims and sayings in verse, it combines a wide variety of writings from earlier authors in one...

Four seminal masterworks of Chinese thought—the Tao Te Ching, the Analects, the Chuang Tzu, and the Mencius—presented in one volume for the first time in nearly two centuries Hinton’s award–winning experience translating a wide range of ancient Chinese...

The classic novel of Jewish immigrants, with period photographs. This masterwork of American immigrant literature is set in the 1920s on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and tells the story of Sara Smolinsky, the youngest daughter of an Orthodox rabbi,...

A Contemporary Classics hardcover omnibus of the complete fiction of one of the most gifted writers of the Harlem Renaissance, including her most famous novel, PassingThroughout her short but brilliant literary career, Nella Larsen wrote piercing...

The classic World War II–era dystopian novel, written at the midpoint between Brave New World and 1984, in its first new translation in more than fifty yearsA Penguin ClassicLeo Kall is a zealous middle-ranking scientist in the totalitarian World...

A classic novel of ruthless revenge set in the steel jungle of an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico - and on the sea bed below it. Off the Gulf of Mexico lies a sunken DC-3. Its cargo: millions of dollars in gold ingots and jewels guarded by the remains of...

Plutarch’s vivid and engaging portraits of the Spartans and their customs are a major source of our knowledge about the rise and fall of their remarkable Greek city-state between the sixth and third centuries BC. Through his Lives of Sparta’s leaders and...

Selections from one of the greatest essayists of the Graeco-Roman worldPlutarch used an encyclopedic knowledge of the Roman Empire to produce a compelling and individual voice. In this superb selection from his writings, he offers personal insights into...

Tolstoy's passionate and iconoclastic writings—on issues of faith, immortality, freedom, violence, and morality—reflect his intellectual search for truth and a religion firmly grounded in reality. The selection includes 'A Confession,' 'Religion and...