Named for Aristotle’s son, Nicomachus, who was the first to edit this work, The Nicomachean Ethics plays a prominent role in defining Aristotelian ethics. In the ten books of this work, Aristotle explains the good life for man: the life of happiness.

For Aristotle, happiness exists when the soul is in accordance with virtue. Virtue exists in a deliberate choice of actions that take a middle course between excess and deficiency; this is the famous doctrine of the “golden mean.” Courage, for example, is the mean between cowardice and rashness. Justice is the mean between a man’s getting more or less than his due. The supreme happiness, according to Aristotle, is to be found in a life of philosophical contemplation or, at least, in a virtuous life of political activity and public munificence.

A student of Plato and a teacher of Alexander the Great, Aristotle is one of the towering figures in Western thought.

“How can men best live together?” Twenty-three centuries after its compilation, Politics still has much to contribute to this central question of political science. Aristotle’s thorough and carefully argued analysis covers a huge range of political issues in the effort to establish which types of constitution are best, both ideally and in particular circumstances, and how they may be maintained.

Like his predecessor, Plato, Aristotle believed that the ideal constitution should be in accordance with nature, and that it is needed by man, “a political animal,” to fulfill his potential. His premises and arguments form an essential background to the thinking of such philosophers as Thomas Aquinas, Machiavelli, Jean Bodin, and Richard Hooker, and raise questions that are as relevant to modern society as they were to the ancient world.

In New York’s Catskill Mountains before the American Revolution, a Dutch-American villager named Rip Van Winkle falls asleep and wakes up twenty years later without realizing how much time has passed. Unaware that the Revolutionary War has taken place, he must come to terms with the changes he encounters. Washington Irving wrote “Rip Van Winkle” while living in England as part of the collection The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., alongside his other famous tale, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” Irving later admitted that When I wrote the story, I had never been on the Catskills. Since its publication in 1819, the story has become part of American pop culture and has been adapted many times for stage, film, radio, and television.

Here is the world’s most famous master plan for seizing and holding power. Astonishing in its candor, The Prince is a disturbingly realistic and prophetic work on what it takes to be a prince, a king, a president.

When, in 1512, Machiavelli was removed from his post in his beloved Florence, he resolved to set down a treatise on leadership that was practical, not idealistic. The prince he envisioned would be unencumbered by ordinary ethical and moral values. Through the years, The Prince has been misunderstood to the extent that Machiavelli’s name has become synonymous with unscrupulous political behavior. However, it remains essential reading as the ultimate book on power politics. In it Machiavelli analyzes the usually violent means by which men seize, retain, and lose political power. The Prince provides a remarkably uncompromising picture of the true nature of power, no matter who controls it or in what era.Included are selections from Machiavelli’s Discourses upon the First Ten Books of Titus Livy.

In this monumental work of moral and political philosophy, Plato sought to answer some of the world’s most formidable questions: What does it mean to be good? What enables us to distinguish between right and wrong? How should human virtues be translated into a just society? Perhaps the greatest single treatise written on political philosophy, The Republic has strongly influenced Western thought concerning questions of justice, rule, obedience, and the good life.

This work is also undoubtedly the best introduction to Plato’s philosophy in general. Not only does it contain his ideas on the state and man but also his famous theory of forms, his theory of knowledge, and his views on the role of music and poetry in society.

American author, poet, and philosopher Henry David Thoreau was a passionate abolitionist. Inspired by his opposition to slavery, his illuminating essay “Civil Disobedience” presents the theory that “the government is best that governs least.” A powerful testament that remains as important today as it was during its conception, this theory argues that citizens should not allow their government to overrule through taxes and unjust laws.

“Man was born free, but everywhere he is in chains.” Thus begins Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s influential 1762 work, On the Social Contract, a milestone of political science and essential reading for students of history, philosophy, and social science. A progressive work, it inspired worldwide political reforms, most notably the American and French Revolutions, because it argued that monarchs were not divinely empowered to legislate. Rousseau asserts that only the people, in the form of the sovereign, have that all-powerful right. On the Social Contract‘s appeal and influence has been wide-ranging and continuous. It has been called an encomium to democracy and, at the same time, a blueprint for totalitarianism. Individualists, collectivists, anarchists, and socialists have all taken courage from Rousseau’s controversial masterpiece.

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