This early work by Henry James was originally published in 1877 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography. Henry James was born in New York City in 1843. One of thirteen children, James had an unorthodox early education, switching between schools, private tutors and private reading.. James published his first story, 'A Tragedy of Error', in the Continental Monthly in 1864, when he was twenty years old. In 1876, he emigrated...

In this early Forster novel, a young Englishman journeys to Tuscany to rescue his late brother's wife from what appears to be an unsuitable romance with an Italian of little fortune.

Written in just fifty-two days in the year 1839, "The Charterhouse of Parma" has since become known as Stendhal's finest work. Evidence of haste is infrequently apparent in this remarkable story, which follows the eventful life of the young Italian nobleman Fabrizio del Dongo. From his childhood in the family castle by Lake Como to the battlefields of Waterloo, Fabrizio proves himself charmingly headstrong and painfully naïve. Upon returning injured...

Set in 1872, Mr. Phileas Fogg, a gentleman of precision and predictability, and his manservant, the ever resourceful Passepartout, ride through India on an elephant, sail the South China Sea in the teeth of a typhoon, and cross the snow-covered plains of the American Wild West in order to fulfill a wager that the journey can be completed in just 80 days.

First published posthumously in 1779, "Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion" is Scottish philosopher David Hume's classic work of religious philosophy. This detailed and exhaustive examination of the nature and existence of God was begun by Hume in 1750, but not completed until shortly before his death in 1776. Hume was an important and influential English Empiricist, along with other English philosophers such as Francis Bacon, John Locke, and Thomas...

This edition includes a modern introduction and a list of suggested further reading. Jean-Jacques Rousseau's thesis that children are naturally good at birth violated the traditional Christian doctrine of origin sin. His argument that education should arise from children's natural instincts and impulses rather than trying to civilize and socialize them challenged traditional schooling. Rousseau's defenders see him as a pioneering thinker whose revolutionary...

Thomas Paine's primary object in writing "The Age of Reason" was to call into question the conventional understanding of religion and to undermine the power of the Christian church. As provocative and controversial today as when Paine first wrote it, this incendiary work suggests what is necessary to transform religion into a social force that has its foundation in reason. --Amazon.com.

This edition includes a modern introduction and a list of suggested further reading. Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions is the first modern autobiography, and arguably the most influential autobiography ever written. What we think of as the "self," our self-sufficient identity, finds its roots in the Confessions. Rousseau's great autobiography speaks to us with a voice that is as relevant today as it was revolutionary and unsettling in the eighteenth...

Uncovering a governmental conspiracy to frame a friend for murder puts David Balfour on the run and striving to protect the woman he's come to love. Released with the title David Balfour when originally released in the United States, Catriona is Robert Louis Stevenson's follow-up to Kidnapped. David Balfour, hero of both books, is made a target by his willingness to testify in favor of a friend falsely accused of murder. His stubborn sense of justice...

This edition includes a modern introduction and a list of suggested further reading. In Alexander, Theodore Ayrault Dodge lays out a detailed account of Alexander's spectacular life and supplies a vivid reconstruction of all of the major battles Alexander fought in his short but successful march of conquest. Dodge amply illustrates through this detailed history of the nature of warfare in the ancient world why both his contemporaries and later historians...