Greek philosopher and scientist, Aristotle, lived in the 4th century B.C. and is thought of as one of the most important figures from classical antiquity. Aristotle was probably the most famous member of Plato's Academy in Athens, whose writings would ultimately form the first comprehensive system of Western philosophy. His writings were not constrained to simply one field of inquiry but covered such various subjects as physics, biology, metaphysics,...

Devotions upon Emergent Occasions is a 1624 prose work by the English writer John Donne, who dedicated it to the future King Charles I. It is a series of reflections that were written as Donne recovered from a serious illness, believed to be either typhus or relapsing fever. Nathaniel Hawthorne, the great American author, cunningly, informatively, and entertainingly recounts several stories in American history. each story is told by a grandfather...

George Lamming's "In the Castle of My Skin" skilfully depicts the Barbadian psyche. Set against the backdrop of the 1930s riots which helped to pave the way for Independence and the modern Barbados, through the eyes of a young boy, Lamming portrays the social, racial, political and urban struggles with which Barbados continues to grapple even with some thirty-three years of Political Independence from Britain.

The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color-Line (1899) is a collection of short stories by African American writer, lawyer, and political activist Charles Chesnutt. Originally published in a July 1888 edition of The Atlantic-in which, in 1887, Chesnutt became the first African American to have a story published in its pages-"The Wife of His Youth" has become the author's most frequently anthologized story. The Wife of His Youth and Other...

The Conjure Woman (1899) is a collection of stories by African American author, lawyer, and political activist Charles Chesnutt. "The Goophered Grapevine," the collection's opening story, was originally published in The Atlantic in 1887, making Chesnutt the first African American to have a story published in the magazine. The Conjure Woman is now considered a masterpiece of African American fiction for its use of folklore and exploration of racist...

"All men by nature are actuated with the desire of knowledge," declared Aristotle. The philosopher's works are foundational to the history of science, and his treatise on metaphysics, or "first philosophy," is divided into sections on previous philosophical thought and theories; a refutation of skepticism; a demonstration of God's existence; an examination of the relation of metaphysics to the other sciences; an elucidation of the nature of the infinite;...

Literature and Revolution, written by the founder and commander of the Red Army, Leon Trotsky, in 1924 and first published in 1925, represents a compilation of essays that Trotsky drafted during the summers of 1922 and 1923. This book is a classic work of literary criticism from the Marxist standpoint. By discussing the various literary trends that were around in Russia between the revolutions of 1905 and 1917, Trotsky analyses the concrete forces...