John Brown

In 1902, self-taught British philosopher and author James Allen published this inspirational essay based on the Bible verse “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” This slender volume (only 68 pages) has been a popular classic ever since. Allen preached the importance of people taking responsibility for themselves and their actions as well as using determination to improve the mind. The most frequently quoted lines from the book include: «Men do not attract what they want, but what they...

'The Meditations' is a series of personal writings by Marcus Aurelius, the Roman Emperor from 161 to 180 AD, in 12 short chapters called 'books'. It was written in the 70s of the II century AD, mostly during the Emperor's campaigns in Central Europe, at the north-east border of the Roman Empire and in Sirmium. In essence, it is a rethink of the philosophy of Epictetus, often quoted in the book: it is useless to attempt to change the world to suit one's needs, one should accept calmly and...

The famous phrase of the writer: “Brevity is the sister of talent”, could not be more suited to the work of Anton Chekhov himself. One right stroke to mark the character, with apt word to say about the main thing, to precisely place accents and draw a bright three-dimensional picture in just a few minutes is the work of the wizard. No one is as amused as Chekhov, and no one is so sad as he. The collection includes selected stories and stories in which the classic, who entered the history of...

The Art of War, literally The Laws of War by Master Sun is the most famous ancient Chinese treatise, dedicated to a military strategy and policy, written by Sun Tzu. The treatise by Sun Tzu influenced crucially on a whole military art of the East. Although it is the first treatise on the military art, it includes clearly expressed common principles of strategy as well as tactics. A special place in a military theoretical literature belongs to comments on Sun Tzu, the earliest of which appeared...

The Communist Manifesto, originally titled Manifesto of the Communist Party (German: Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei) is a short 1848 book written by the German Marxist political theorists Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. It has since been recognized as one of the world's most influential political manuscripts. Commissioned by the Communist League, it laid out the League's purposes and program. It presents an analytical approach to the class struggle (historical and present) and the problems...

The Divine Comedy Inferno by Dante Alighieri, begun c. 1308 and completed in 1320, that gives the widest synthesis of medieval culture and world ontology. Dante's Inferno a real medieval encyclopedia of scientific, political, philosophical, moral and religious knowledges. It is considered to be the preeminent work in Italian and world literature. The Divine Comedy is a result work of the whole second part of Dante’s life; it is his last and most mature creation. The poet’s view of the world is...

The Little Prince (French: Le Petit Prince) is a novella by French aristocrat, writer, and aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. It was first published in English and French in the US by Reynal & Hitchcock in April 1943, and posthumously in France following the liberation of France as Saint-Exupéry's works had been banned by the Vichy Regime. The story follows a young prince who visits various planets in space, including Earth, and addresses themes of loneliness, friendship, love, and loss. Despite...

New translation of The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. Poor Gregor Samsa! This guy wakes up one morning to discover that he's become a «monstrous vermin». The first pages of The Metamorphosis where Gregor tries to communicate through the bedroom door with his family, who think he’s merely being lazy, is vintage screwball comedy. Indeed, scholars and readers alike have delighted in Kafka’s gallows humor and matter-of-fact handling of the absurd and the terrifying. But it is one of the most...

Anton Chekhov belongs to the cohort of the most prominent Russian classics, together with Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgenev and Pushkin. The rankings of the most read authors, comprising the ‘golden fund’ of the world’s literature, persistently include Chekhov alongside Charles Dickens, the Bronte Sisters, Mark Twain… Chekhov’s plays, such as ‘Three Sisters’, ‘The Cherry Orchard’, and the short stories of this collection, are featured in the curriculum of faculties of philology of top global...