History

Mencius was one of the great philosophers of ancient China, second only in influence to Confucius, whose teachings he defended and expanded. The Mencius, in which he recounts his dialogues with kings, dukes and military men, as well as other...

The philosophies of an ancient Chinese master.Very little is known about Master Mo, or the school he founded. However, the book containing his philosophical ideas has survived centuries of neglect and is today recognised as a fundamental work of ancient...

An "official" record that focuses solely on battlefields and political speeches and the passage of legislation presents an incomplete picture of our history; this is an accessible, entertaining story of social change from an overlooked quarter of our...

Phaedrus is widely recognized as one of Plato's most profound and beautiful works. It takes the form of a dialogue between Socrates and Phaedrus and its ostensible subject is love, especially homoerotic love. This new translation is accompanied by an...

Berkeley's idealism started a revolution in philosophy. As one of the great empiricist thinkers he not only influenced British philosophers from Hume to Russell and the logical positivists in the twentieth-century, he also set the scene for the...

One of the greatest philosophers, Bishop Berkeley (1685-1753) was the founder of the influential doctrine of Immaterialism - the belief that there is no reality outside the mind, and that the existence of material objects depends upon their being...

Why do we wear what we wear? To answer this question, we must go back and unlock the wardrobes of the early twentieth century, when fashion as we know it was born. 'He makes us see a subject we thought we knew so well from a completely different angle;...

A new perspective on parallels between ancient Rome and the modern world, and what comes next. “[A] provocative short book . . . with a novel twist.”—The Economist. Over the last three centuries, the West rose to dominate the...

Hone your senses and learn to read the hidden signs of nature—from master outdoorsman Tristan Gooley, New York Times-bestselling author of How to Read a Tree and The Lost Art of Reading Nature’s Signs.“Equal parts alfresco inspiration,...

Readers may be familiar with such things as natural weather forecasting, basic tracking and natural navigation, but THE WALKER'S GUIDE will reveal intriguing new lessons, including telling the time and date using the stars and detecting which animals are...

In The Story of Scandinavia, political scholar Stein Ringen chronicles more than 1,200 years of drama, economic rise and fall, crises, kings and queens, war, peace, language and culture.Scandinavian history has been one of dramatic discontinuities...

A bold, provocative reckoning with our current political delusions and dysfunctions. Ever since its publication in 1651, Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan has unsettled and challenged how we understand the world. Condemned and vilified by each new...

An exciting account of the origins of the modern world.Who formed the first literate society? Who invented our modern ideas of democracy and free market capitalism? The Scots. As historian and author Arthur Herman reveals, in the eighteenth and...

Christopher Neve's classic book is a journey into the imagination through the English landscape. How is it that artists, by thinking in paint, have come to regard the landscape as representing states of mind? 'Painting', says Neve, 'is a process of...

That Machiavelli’s name has become synonymous with cold-eyed political calculation only heightens the intrinsic fascination of The Prince–the world’s preeminent how-to manual on the art of getting and keeping power, and one of the...

The kind of story that opens a lot of people’s eyes, The Fund exposes Ray Dalio for who he really is, pulling no punches as it points the finger at not just him, but all the guilty parties that allowed any of this to happen. It’s a biting...

A poignant, incisive meditation on Israel’s longstanding rejection of peace, and what the war on Gaza means for Palestinian and Israeli futures.When apartheid in South Africa ended in 1994, dismantled by internal activism and global pressure, why...

“All at once funny, touching, dazzlingly informative and fascinating, brilliantly imaginative and altogether wonderful. Capable of switching between divine silliness and genuinely tender sweetness, tragedy, and wonder.”—STEPHEN FRY...

There's no better way to enjoy the cultural imprint MAD Magazine made than with some of the folks who made it. This is what we've been waiting for, a collection of work from some of the greatest to pass through the pages of MAD.Celebrate America's...

The Little Book of Gucci tells the story of this historic yet flourishing house, and the visionary looks that have cemented its place in fashion history. One of the oldest Italian fashion brands in existence today, Gucci was founded in Florence in 1921...