History of Florence and of the Affairs of Italy is an historical account by Niccolò Machiavelli. Toward the end of 1520, the Cardinal Giulio of Medici, later Pope Clement VII, offered Machiavelli the appointment to write a history of Florence. Although Machiavelli was reluctant to accept, accepting was his only way to regain the good graces of the Medici who had regained power and were in a position to offer him employment and protection. Doing the history also provided a way for Machiavelli’s views to become the “official” history of Florentine and Italian affairs. Once completed, the work was presented officially to Giulio, now Pope, in May of 1526.

“(T)he past is what man should not have been. The present is what man ought not to be. The future is what artists are.”Published originally as “The Soul of Man Under Socialism,” this is not so much a work of sober political analysis; rather it can be summed up as a rhapsodic manifesto on behalf of the Individual. Socialism having deployed technology to liberate the whole of humanity from soul-destroying labour, the State obligingly withers away to allow the free development of a joyful, anarchic hedonism...

Nonfiction. Appalled by the savagery of World War I, Owen Wister in 1915 published an attempt to move the United States out of neutrality into joining the Allies against Germany. His aim was the quicker defeat of that nation. (Wister: “the new Trinity of German worship – the Super-man, the Super-race, and the Super-state.”) He was but one of many literary personages who joined in this effort. A moving quote: “Perhaps nothing save calamity will teach us what Europe is thankful to have learned again – that some things are worse than war, and that you can pay too high a price for peace; but that you cannot pay too high for the finding and keeping of your own soul.”

In this work, Kropotkin points out what he considers to be the fallacies of the economic systems of feudalism and capitalism, and how he believes they create poverty and scarcity while promoting privilege. He goes on to propose a more decentralised economic system based on mutual aid and voluntary cooperation, asserting that the tendencies for this kind of organisation already exist, both in evolution and in human society.

Νόμοι (Laws) is Plato's final dialogue written after his attempt to advise the tyrant Dionysius II of Syracuse. The dialogue takes place between: an Athenian Stranger (Socrates? A god in human form?); the quiet Lacedaemonian Megillus; and the Cretan Cleinias. The Stranger asks whether humans live to be more effective at waging war or if there is something more important a legislator should seek to achieve. During their pilgrimage Cleinias discloses his role in the establishment of a new colony...

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941), also known by the sobriquet Gurudev, was a Bengali poet, Brahmo religionist, visual artist, playwright, novelist, and composer whose works reshaped Bengali literature and music in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He became Asia’s first Nobel laureate when he won the 1913 Nobel Prize in Literature. The Home and the World is a 1916 novel, set in the estate of the rich Bengali noble Nikhil. He lives happily with his beautiful wife Bimala until the appearance of his friend and radical revolutionist, Sandip...

"The Short Line War is a story that will appeal more particularly to the sterner sex, and we take it that the hyphenated name, Merwin-Webster, stands for two healthy-minded young men who have put their heads together and who have mapped out this story of a railroad war, in which politics form a considerable part. Jim Weeks is the central figure in the fight, and we like him so much better for knowing of the romance in his early life. He was a man 'without much instinct or imagination; he took everything seriously and literally, he could not understand a whim'--therefore a very foolish little woman came into his life only to leave it desolate...

As contemporary today as it was over a century ago, this relatively unsentimental tale of labor relations still packs a punch.

Anyone, as Freud tells us in Reflections on War and Death, forced to react against his own impulses may be described as a hypocrite, whether he is conscious of it or not. One might even venture to assert—it is still Freud’s argument—that our contemporary civilisation favours this sort of hypocrisy and that there are more civilised hypocrites than truly cultured persons, and it is even a question whether a certain amount of hypocrisy is not indispensable to maintain civilisation. When this...

On the surface, this short play is a slice-of-life story about a murder investigation in the rural United States. However, it is also a story about the relationships between men and women, husbands and wives, and the often-overlooked "trifles" which can say so much about a person's life.

Problems in American Democracy is a very detailed, specific explanation of some of the underlying and surface problems of a democracy system of government, particularly of the American form of democracy. Though lengthy, it is a great read for people who want to learn more about different types of government and the foundations of our own government in the United States of America.

Theodore Roosevelt became the 26th president of the United States when president William McKinley was assassinated in 1901. As the youngest president, Roosevelt advanced the progressive Republican program known as the “Square Deal” focused on conservation of natural resources, control of corporations, and consumer protection. Expanding on this theme, “The matter contained is this book has been carefully prepared from the many addresses by the President, the aim being to bring under each specific head the ideas expressed on many occasions, by Horace Markle.” Topics range from The Farmer to World Peace, and The Essence of Christian Character. - Summary by Larry Wilson

Books 1 and 2. Leviathan, or The Matter, Forme and Power of a Common Wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil is a book written in 1651 by Thomas Hobbes. The book concerns the structure of society (as represented figuratively by the frontispiece, showing the state giant made up of individuals). In the book, Hobbes argues for a social contract and rule by a sovereign. Influenced by the English Civil War, Hobbes wrote that chaos or civil war – situations identified with a state of nature and the famous motto bellum omnium contra omnes (”the war of all against all”) – could only be averted by strong central government...

A dialogue between a Grandmaster of the Knights Hospitallers and a Genoese Sea-captain, about the latter's voyage to a utopian city.

This is a concise yet thorough explanation of what might happen to our world in the aftermath of a nuclear war. The myriad of potential effects will be global and wide-spread, and the potentials are glazed over in this short work.