"In The Constitution, constitutional scholar Michael Stokes Paulsen and his son Luke provide a clear, accessible introduction to the history and meaning of this historic document. Beginning with the Constitution's birth in 1787, Paulsen and Paulsen offer a grand tour of its history and interpretations, introducing readers to the characters and controversies that have shaped this founding instrument in the 200-plus years since its creation. In order...

"Discourses on Livy", which was first published posthumously in 1531, is Niccolo Machiavelli's analysis of the first ten books of Livy's monumental work of Roman History, which details the expansion of Rome through the end of the Third Samnite War in 293 BC. Machiavelli believed that by examining the exemplary greatness in Roman history, practical lessons could be applied to the politics of the present day. The Italian renaissance was causing people...

The landmark political treatise that refuted the so-called divine right of kings and established the principles of representative government   "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains."   With these stirring words, Jean-Jacques Rousseau begins The Social Contract-the first shot in a battle of ideas that would set the stage for the American War of Independence and the French Revolution. In the feverish days of the Enlightenment, Rousseau...

Las personas que intentan obtener el beneplácito de algún soberano, a menudo le ofrecen algo de gran importancia para ellos mismos, o algo que saben es de su particular agrado. Es por esto que los gobernantes siempre están recibiendo caballos, armas, brocados de oro, joyas y todo tipo de ropas elegantes que los donatarios consideran apropiados. Con la esperanza de traer ante vuestra Majestad una muestra de mi lealtad, me doy cuenta de que no hay...

"From acclaimed columnist and political commentator Michael Harriot, a searingly smart and bitingly hilarious retelling of American history that corrects the record and showcases the perspectives and experiences of Black Americans. America's backstory is a whitewashed mythology implanted in our collective memory. It is the story of the pilgrims on the Mayflower building a new nation. It is George Washington's cherry tree and Abraham Lincoln's log...

This translation first appeared in a privately printed edition in 1904 (the translator remains anonymous). With an Introduction by Derek Matravers. When it was first published in 1781, The Confessions scandalised Europe with its emotional honesty and frank treatment of the author's sexual and intellectual development. Since then, it has had a more profound impact on European thought. Rousseau left posterity a model of the reflective life - the solitary,...

Documents the kaleidoscopic year during which transformative talents from Hollywood, Sunset Boulevard, and Beverly Hills heavily influenced pop culture, politics, and social movements. Los Angeles in 1974 exerted more influence over popular culture than any other city in America. Working in film, recording, and television studios, a cluster of transformative talents produced an explosion in popular culture which reflected the demographic, social,...

Christopher Hitchens, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of God Is Not Great has been called a Tom Paine for our times, and in this addition to the Books that Changed the World Series, he vividly introduces Paine and his Declaration of the Rights of Man, the world's foremost defense of democracy. Inspired by his outrage at Edmund Burke's attack on the French Revolution, Paine's text is a passionate defense of man's inalienable rights, and the...

"CHINA AND THE UNITED STATES ARE HEADING TOWARD A WAR NEITHER WANTS. The reason is Thucydides's Trap, a deadly pattern of structural stress that results when a rising power challenges a ruling one. This phenomenon is as old as history itself. About the Peloponnesian War that devastated ancient Greece, the historian Thucydides explained: "It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable." Over the past 500...

The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860) is a work of art history by Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt. Recognized today as the founder of modern art history and as one of the key thinkers of the nineteenth century, Burckhardt changed not only the way we think about the Renaissance in relation to European and world history, but the value placed on art as a tool for understanding historical developments. The Civilization of the Renaissance...