18 books like The Art of War
Gorin no sho
A psychological guide to strategy applicable to business, philosophy, or martial arts, written by sixteenth-century warrior Miyamoto Musashi as a means of explaining his success as a practitioner of Japanese swordfighting, or Kendo.
Shares: Military art and science, Early works to 1800, Classics, Philosophy
Γοργίας
There is a well-known saying that the whole of Western Philosophy is footnotes of Plato. This is because his writings have set the schema that philosophy can be said to have followed ever since. Following under the teachings of Socrates, Plato's works are among the world's greatest literature. In the Gorgias, as in nearly all the other dialogues of Plato, we are made aware that formal logic has…
Shares: Great_books_of_the_western_world, Open_syllabus_project, Early works to 1800, Philosophy
The 48 Laws of Power
Amoral, cunning, ruthless, and instructive, this piercing work distills three thousand years of the history of power in to forty-eight well explicated laws. As attention--grabbing in its design as it is in its content, this bold volume outlines the laws of power in their unvarnished essence, synthesizing the philosophies of Machiavelli, Sun-tzu, Carl von Clausewitz, and other great thinkers. Some…
Shares: Self-Improvement, Politics, Business
Alcestis
"Euripides' Alcestic - perhaps the most anthologized Attic drama - is an ideal test for students reading their first play in the original Greek. Literary commentaries and language aids in most editions are too advanced or too elementary for intermediate students of the language, but in this new student edition, C. A. E. Luschnig and H. M. Roisman remedy such deficiencies." "The introductory…
Shares: Great_books_of_the_western_world, Open_syllabus_project
Areopagitica
Areopagitica: A speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing to the Parliament of England is John Milton's famous tract against censorship. Published in 1644, Areopagitica is named after a speech by Isocrates, a fifth century BC Athenian orator. The work is counted as one of the most influential and inspired defenses of the right to freedom of expression in history. It is also a personal issue…
Shares: Politics, Early works to 1800, Philosophy
Leviathan
Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan, from 1651, is one of the first and most influential arguments towards social contract. Written in the midst of the English Civil War, it concerns the structure of government and society and argues for strong central governance and the rule of an absolute sovereign as the way to avoid civil war and chaos.
Shares: Politics, Open_syllabus_project, Early works to 1800, Philosophy
Two Treatises on Government
The “Two Treatises of Government” is about the former false principles and foundation of sir Robert Filmer and his followers. They are detected and overthrown. The latter is an essay concerning the true original extent and end of civil government.Please Note: This book is easy to read in true text, not scanned images that can sometimes be difficult to decipher. The Microsoft eBook has a…
Shares: Politics, Open_syllabus_project, Early works to 1800, Philosophy
Discourses on Livy
A very different work from his well-known The Prince, and posthumously published a year prior to it, Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy is one of his most debated works. Some critics see it as presenting a counterpoint or refutation of The Prince, calling it a key founding document of modern liberal republicanism. Others maintain that it is complementary, arguing that leaders of republics must act…
Shares: Military art and science, Early works to 1800, Philosophy, History
Lun yu
Here is a translation of the recorded thoughts and deeds that best remember Confucius - informed for the first time by the manuscript version found at Dingzhou in 1973, a partial text dating to 55 b.c.e. and only made available to the scholarly world in 1997. Based on the earliest Analects yet discovered, this translation provides us with a new perspective on the central canonical text that has…
Shares: Great_books_of_the_western_world, Early works to 1800, Philosophy
Feeling is the Secret
Your thoughts shape your life, create your reality, and ultimately limit or expand your true potential. This book describes how our thoughts and feelings affect who we become and what we achieve. When we have the power to change them, we gain the power to change our circumstances, our health, and our life's purpose.
"The world, and all within it, is man's conditioned consciousness objectified.…
Shares: Classics, Philosophy
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion is a philosophical work by the Scottish philosopher David Hume. Through dialogue, three fictional characters named Demea, Philo, and Cleanthes debate the nature of God's existence. While all three agree that a god exists, they differ sharply in opinion on God's nature or attributes and how, or if, humankind can come to knowledge of a deity.
In the Dialogues,…
Shares: Open_syllabus_project, Early works to 1800, Religion, Philosophy
The scholemaster
With centuries of literature, it's inevitable that some will fall through the cracks. We hunt down public domain works and restore them so they're not lost to the world.
Who are we? We're Cairn Press. Our background is in design, publishing, typography, and technology. These skills fuel our mission to create the highest quality Public Domain eBooks available online, at an affordable price. We…
Shares: Military art and science, Early works to 1800, Philosophy
Self-help
Self-Help; With Illustrations of Character and Conduct is a book published in 1859 by Samuel Smiles. The second edition of 1866 added Perseverance to the subtitle. It has been called "the bible of mid-Victorian liberalism".M. J. Cohen and John Major (eds.), History in Quotations (London: Cassell, 2004), p. 611. Darwin biographer Janet Browne called it "the bible of the improving middle classes,"…
Shares: Self-Improvement, Early works to 1800, Philosophy
The day boy and the night girl
A curse from a witch decrees that a boy will never wake at night nor sleep during the day; while a girl is doomed never to sleep at night nor wake during the day, until a twist of fate brings them together.
Shares: Classics, Religion
East of Eden
Set in the rich farmland of the Salinas Valley, California, this powerful, often brutal novel, follows the interwined destinies of two families - the Trasks and the Hamiltons - whose generations hopelessly re-enact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel. Here Steinbeck created some of his most memorable characters and explored his most enduring themes: the mystery of…
Shares: Classics
Lord of the Flies
Lord of the Flies is the 1954 debut novel of British author William Golding. The plot concerns a group of prepubescent British boys who are stranded on an uninhabited island and their disastrous attempts to govern themselves that lead to a descent into savagery. The novels themes include morality, leadership, and the tension between civility and chaos.
Shares: Classics
The Count of Monte Cristo
Thrown in prison for a crime he has not committed, Edmond Dantès is confined to the grim fortress of If. There he learns of a great hoard of treasure hidden on the Isle of Monte Cristo and he becomes determined not only to escape, but also to use the treasure to plot the destruction of the three men responsible for his incarceration.
Shares: Classics
The Master and Margarita
The Master and Margarita () is a novel by Mikhail Bulgakov, written in the Soviet Union between 1928 and 1940. A censored version, with several chapters cut by editors, was published posthumously in Moscow magazine in 1966–1967 by his widow Elena Bulgakova. The manuscript was first published as a book in 1967, in Paris, France. A samizdat version circulated that included parts cut out by official…
Shares: Classics