Charles Darwin s foremost biographer, Janet Browne, delivers a vivid and accessible introduction to the book that permanently altered our understanding of what it is to be human. A sensation on its publication in 1859, "The Origin of the Species "profoundly shocked Victorian readers by calling into question the belief in a Creator with its description of evolution through natural selection. And Darwin s seminal work is nearly as controversial today. In her illuminating study, Browne delves into the long genesis of Darwin s theories, from his readings as a university student and his five-year...

Perhaps the most important book on military strategy ever written, Carl von Clausewitz s "On War" has influenced generations of generals and politicians, has been blamed for the unprecedented death tolls in the First and Second World Wars, and is required reading at military academies to this day. But "On War, " which was never finished and was published posthumously, is obscure and fundamentally contradictory. What Clausewitz declares in book 1, he discounts in book 8. The language is confusing and the relevance not always clear. It is an extremely difficult book for the general reader to...

Plato is perhaps the most significant philosopher who ever lived and "The Republic," composed in Athens in about 375 BC, is widely regarded as his most famous dialogue. Its discussion of the perfect city--and the perfect mind--laid the foundations for Western culture and has been the cornerstone of Western philosophy. As the distinguished Cambridge professor Simon Blackburn points out, it has probably sustained more commentary, and been subject to more radical and impassioned disagreement, than almost any other text in the modern world. "A clear and accessible introduction to philosophy's...