Why did European, and later Euro-Atlantic, civilizations achieve the most spectacular successes in the history of mankind? Why was it Europe, first independently and later together with the United States of America, that created the world in which we live today? What predetermined the global hegemony of the European worldview – industry, military power, or something else? And what influence...

The Epic of Gilgamesh is one of the oldest works of fiction, written long before Homer's ‘Iliad’ and ‘Odyssey,’ the greatest literary masterpiece of the Ancient East, which for the first time describes the myth of the Great Flood. The reader is presented with the story of the glorious deeds of the demigod king-warrior Gilgamesh (whose image is based on a real historical figure, Bilgames, the...

This collection of Japanese folk tales is translated by the renowned scholar of Japanese literature, Vera Nikolaevna Markova. It includes a preface and commentary by the translator. The tales presented in this collection tell of cunning pranks and mythical feats, of the struggle between good and evil and the triumph of justice, of the magical deeds of a wondrous wife, and of the cruel war...

For all fans of Japanese culture. — A collection of folk tales, myths, and legends. — For those who have already read ‘Tales of Ancient Japan’ and ‘Ten Evenings’.

‘Fight Club’ is Chuck Palahniuk's most famous novel. Everyone remembers the film directed by David Fincher, starring Brad Pitt, right? It's based on this book. It's a challenging novel, a novel created in defiance of everything and everyone, describing a generation of embittered people who have lost their sense of right and wrong, of good and evil, who they are themselves and who surrounds...

‘The Headless Horseman.’ A gem of Mayne Reid's literary legacy. The captivating story of the beautiful Louise Poindexter and the noble Irishman Maurice Gerald, the proud Mexican woman Isidora Covarrubio, the cruel Captain Cassius Calhoun, the brave hunter Zeb Stump, and the dashing bandit El Coyote is considered a true masterpiece of adventure prose and is endlessly loved by both foreign and...

First published in Rolling Stone magazine in 1971, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is the best chronicle of drug-soaked, addle-brained, rollicking good times ever committed to the printed page. It is also the tale of a long weekend road trip that has gone down in the annals of American pop culture as one of the strangest journeys ever experienced. The writer’s account of an assignment he...

In this landmark account, renowned historian Barbara W. Tuchman re-creates the first month of World War I: thirty days in the summer of 1914 that determined the course of the conflict, the century, and ultimately our present world. Beginning with the funeral of Edward VII, Tuchman traces each step that led to the inevitable clash. And inevitable it was, with all sides plotting their war for...

This is the main collection of poems by Walt Whitman, the outstanding American classic of the nineteenth century and the progenitor of free verse and a humanist. Whitman supplemented and reissued the collection throughout his life. The poems are presented in classic translations by true masters of the word: Korney Chukovsky, Samuel Marshak, and Mikhail Zenkevich.

So begins The War of the Worlds, the science fiction classic that first proposed the possibility of intelligent life on other planets and has enthralled readers for generations. This compelling tale describes the Martian invasion of earth. When huge, tireless creatures land in England, complete chaos erupts. Using their fiery heat rays and crushing strength, the aliens just may succeed in...

Aldous Huxley's profoundly important classic of world literature, Brave New World is a searching vision of an unequal, technologically-advanced future where humans are genetically bred, socially indoctrinated, and pharmaceutically anesthetized to passively uphold an authoritarian ruling order–all at the cost of our freedom, full humanity, and perhaps also our souls.

On the surface, the novel is a love story between the protagonist Jake Barnes—a man whose war wound has made him unable to have sex—and the promiscuous divorcée Lady Brett Ashley. Jake is an expatriate American journalist living in Paris, while Brett is a twice-divorced Englishwoman with bobbed hair and numerous love affairs, and embodies the new sexual freedom of the 1920s. Brett's affair...