Books in the Dover Thrift Editions series

Darkly fascinating short novel depicts the struggles of a doubting, supremely alienated protagonist in a world of relative values. Embraces moral, religious, political, and social themes. Authoritative Constance Garnett translation. New introduction.

Classic, Renaissance-era guide to acquiring and maintaining political power. Today, nearly 500 years after it was written, this calculating prescription for autocratic rule continues to be much read and studied.

This groundbreaking survey from Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Will Durant chronicles the lives and ideas of key philosophical thinkers throughout history. Beginning with Plato and Aristotle, Durant offers lucid, accessible explanations of philosophers' contributions. He explores the legacy of Francis Bacon, Baruch Spinoza, Voltaire, Immanuel Kant, Arthur Schopenhauer, Herbert Spencer, and Friedrich Nietzsche. The last two chapters feature contemporary European philosophers Henri Bergson, Benedetto Croce, and Bertrand Russell, as well as Americans George Santayana, William James, and John Dewey. The author builds a history of philosophy by showing how each thinker's ideas informed and influenced the next generation. First published in 1926, The Story of Philosophy is essential reading for anyone fascinated by the development of Western philosophy.

A first-century Stoic, Epictetus argued that we will always be happy if we learn to desire that things should be exactly as they are. His "Enchiridion "distills his teachings to illuminate a way to a tranquil life.

Classics of English poetry, alternately describing childhood states of innocence and their inevitable ensnarement in a corrupt and repressive world. Contains the full texts of all the poems in the original 1794 edition of both collections.

This classic of the interior life and Christian mysticism by the sainted 16th-century Spanish mystic and Carmelite nun focuses on the practice of prayer. Modern readers will appreciate its warmth and accessibility.

A landmark of 20th-century American literature: a series of over 200 compelling free-verse monologues in which former citizens of a mythical midwestern town speak touchingly from the grave of the thwarted hopes and dreams of their lives. Reprinted from the authoritative 1915 edition.

Dostoyevskys masterpiece introduces a world filled with greed, passion, depravity, and complex moral issues, as three brothers become involved in the brutal murder of their own father. This edition features an Afterword by bestselling author Sara Peretsky. Revised reissue.

Poetry is the greatest literary form of ancient Persia and modern Iran, and the 14th-century poet known as Hafiz is its preeminent master. This collection is derived from Hafiz's "Divan "(collected poems), a classic of Sufism.

One of the most powerful and enduring of Greek tragedies, masterfully portraying the fierce motives driving Medea's pursuit of vengeance for her husband's insult and betrayal. Authoritative Rex Warner translation.

The only chronicle by an ancient general of his own campaigns, this eloquent history offers priceless details about Gaul, Germany, and Britain during the 1st century B.C. Includes 6 maps, 7 figures.

Major work on ethics, by one of the most influential thinkers of the last 2 centuries, deals with master/slave morality and modern man's current moral practices; the evolution of man's feelings of guilt and bad conscience; and how ascetic ideals help maintain human life under certain conditions.

Unique features include an extensive overview of Shakespeare's life, world, and theater by the general editor of Signet Classic Shakespeare series, plus a special introduction to the play by the editor Sylvan Barnet, Tufts University. This book contains information on the source from which Shakespeare derived "Othello"--selections from Giraldi Cinthio's "Hecatommithi". Special introduction by Alvin Kernan, Princeton University.

Stimulating, thought-provoking utopian fantasy about a young man who's put into a hypnotic trance in the late 19th century and awakens in the year 2000 to find crime, war, and want nonexistent.

Rich in detail, shrewdly observed, and vividly narrated, these 6 tales include "Three Deaths," "The Three Hermits," "The Devil," "Father Sergius," "Master and Man," and the title story.

Nature was a form of religion for naturalist, essayist, and early environmentalist Henry David Thoreau (1817 62). In communing with the natural world, he wished to "live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and learn what it had to teach." Toward that end Thoreau built a cabin in the spring of 1845 on the shores of Walden Pond on land owned by Ralph Waldo Emerson outside Concord, Massachusetts. There he observed nature, farmed, built fences, surveyed, and wrote in his journal.One product of his two-year sojourn was this book a great classic of American letters. Interwoven with accounts of Thoreau's daily life (he received visitors and almost daily walked into Concord) are mediations on human existence, society, government, and other topics, expressed with wisdom and beauty of style.Walden offers abundant evidence of Thoreau's ability to begin with observations on a mundane incident or the minutiae of nature and then develop these observations into profound ruminations on the most fundamental human concerns. Credited with influencing Tolstoy, Gandhi, and other thinkers, the volume remains a masterpiece of philosophical reflection."