A new illustrated gift edition of a beloved classic. Three hundred years ago, a great deal of the world as we now know it was still undiscovered. A voyage in those days was not a pleasant thing, and a traveller was likely to encounter mysterious islands and strange people. Danger lurked around every corner, and friends and foes are to be found unexpectedly, and in equal measure. When Lemeul Gulliver, a ship's surgeon, sets off on the high seas in...

Recounts the legend of Robin Hood, who plundered the king's purse and poached his deer and whose generosity endeared him to the poor.

The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky's crowning achievement, is a tale of patricide & family rivalry that embodies the moral & spiritual dissolution of an entire society (Russia in the 1870s). It created a national furor comparable only to the excitement stirred by the publication, in 1866, of Crime & Punishment. To Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov captured the quintessence of Russian character in all its exaltation, compassion, & profligacy. Significantly,...

Aristotle's influence upon modern culture has become more and more important in recent years. His contribution to the sum of all wisdom dominates all our philosophy and even provides direction for much of our science. And all effective debaters, whether they know it or not, employ Aristotle's three basic principles of effective argument which form the spine of rhetoric: "ethos," the impact of the speaker's character upon the audience; "pathos," the...

Winston Churchill is perhaps the most important political figure of the twentieth century. His great oratory and leadership during the Second World War were only part of his huge breadth of experience and achievement. In political office at the end of WWI, he foresaw the folly of Versailles and feared what a crippled Germany would do to the balance of power. In his years in the political wilderness from 1931 to 1939, he alone of all British public...

Regarded by Charles Dickens as his best novel upon publication, "Martin Chuzzlewit" relates a tale of familial selfishness and eventual moral redemption. First published serially from 1842 to 1844, it is the story of young Martin Chuzzlewit, who has been raised by his grandfather. He has fallen in love with his grandfather's ward and caretaker, the young orphan Mary Graham. Martin's grandfather does not approve and young Martin alienates himself from...

David Balfour, hero of Kidnapped, gambles his life to clear a friend accused of murder, and finds many obstacles on the path to love with the daughter of true reprobate in Catriona by Robert Louis Stevenson. This classic adventure was the last novel the author wrote alone and displays all his beguiling storytelling skills. -- from back cover.

"Handsome and ambitious, Julien Sorel is determined to rise above his humble peasant origins and make something of his life-by adopting the code of hypocrisy by which his society operates. Julien ultimately commits a crime-out of passion, principle, or insanity-that will bring about his downfall. The Red and the Black is a lively, satirical picture of French Restoration society after Waterloo, riddled with corruption, greed, and ennui. The complex,...

Written in 1831 before Hugo was forced to flee from Louis Napoleon's France. In this novel, Hugo paints a vivid portrait of medieval Paris. Quasimodo, the one-eyed, hunchbacked refugee; Esmeralda, the dancing gypsy girl, threatened by the gallows; and a world where chaos is in charge--Hugo captures them all in this timeless, almost Gothic, piece of literature.