In the year 1792, Sir Percy and Lady Marguerite Blakeney are the darlings of British society - he is known as one of the wealthiest men in England and dimwit; she is a French, a stunning former actress, and "the cleverest woman in Europe."

The first great American man of letters, Washington Irving became an international celebrity almost overnight upon publication of The Sketch-Book in 1820, which included the short stories "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle". These tales remain his two most popular works

English officer and gentlemen Harry Feversham has wealth, social position, a beautiful feancee, Ethne Eustace, and a brotherly bond with three close friends. But he also harbors a dark secret. Though he is expected to continue his family`s proud tradition of military service, he cannot forget the shameful stories he heard as a child: tales of men who shirked their duty and disgraced themeselves in battle

Edith Wharton`s dark view of society, the somber economics of marriage, and the powerlessness of the unwedded woman at the turn of the twentieth century emerge dramatically in the tragic novel The House of Mirth

The world`s first great narrative history, Herodotus`s The Histories vividly describes how the Greeks - few in number, poor, and disunited - managed to repulse a massive invasion by the powerful Persian army in the 5th century B.C.

A monumental work unsurpassed for its brilliant description, accuracy, and penetrating insights, Thucydide`s History of the Peloponnesian War is a spectacular eyewitness report of the war between Greece`s two most powerful city-states, Athens and Sparta, as it unfolded during the fifth century B.C.E

Epigrammatic, enigmatic, intensely poetic, the Tao Te Ching is the mystical, spiritual soul of Taoism, one of the three great religions of ancient China. The Tao is usually translated as "the way" or "the path", but it is better understood as a universal life force that flows around and through all things

A classic of American political thought, The Federalist is a series of eighty-five essays by three authors - Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay - written to curry support for the proposed new Constitution of the United States, a document that many considered too redical

One of the most influential books ever published in America, W.E.B. Du Bois`s The Souls of Black Folk is an eloquent collection of fourteen essays that discribe the life, the ambitions, the struggles, and the passions of African Americans at the transition from the nineteenth to the twentieth century

Set in the 1740s just as the French and Indian wars have begun, the novel opens as Natty Bumppo - known as Deerslayer - and his friend Hurry Harry travel to Tom Hutter`s house in upstate New York. Hurry plans to marry Tom`s beautiful daughter Judith, while Deerslayer has come to help his close friend Chingachgook save his bride-to-be, Wah-ta-Wah, from the Huron Indians. When war breaks out, and Hurry and Tom are captured by Indians, Deerslayer must go on his first warpath to rescue them