'The Art of War' is an ancient Chinese military treatise dating from the fifth century BCE). The work, attributed to the ancient Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu (Sunzi), comprises thirteen chapters, each devoted to an aspect of warfare and its application to military tactics and strategy. It contains a detailed analysis of the Chinese military, from weapons and strategy to rank and discipline as well as the importance of intelligence and espionage in war. 'The Art of War' remains the most influential strategy manual in East Asian warfare and has influenced both Eastern and Western military thinking, business tactics, legal strategy and beyond. The first annotated English translation was published by Lionel Giles in 1910.
Gertrude Chandler Warner (1890 -1979) was an author, mainly of children's stories. 'The Boxcar Children' is the first book in the series and was published in 1924. It tells the story of four orphaned children, Henry, Jessie, Violet, and Benny who create a home for themselves in an abandoned boxcar in the forest. Later, they meet their kind and wealthy grandfather and go to live with him. The book was adapted for film in 2014. Based on a 2007 online poll, the National Education Association named the book as one of its 'Teachers' Top 100 Books for Children'. In 2012 the book was ranked among the all-time Top 100 children's novels in a survey published by School Library Journal.
George MacDonald (1824 –1905) was a Scottish author, poet and Christian minister. He was a pioneering figure in the field of modern fantasy literature and the mentor of fellow writer Lewis Carroll. ‘Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women’ is a fantasy novel, which was first published in 1858. It is a coming-of-age tale or spiritual quest narrative of the character Anodos, a young man who is pulled into a dreamlike realm where he goes on a long journey full of dramatic adventures. Anodos discovers the fairies that live in flowers, the tree spirits, and a host of other creatures and apparitions. Ultimately he learns and understands about surrendering the self.
Oswald Chambers (1874-1917) was a famous Baptist evangelist. In 'Biblical Psychology', Chambers writes a treatise to the soul. It remains one of his most beloved books.
Mikhail Bakunin (1814 -1876) was a Russian revolutionary anarchist and is considered one of the most influential figures of anarchism. Bakunin's 'God and the State', an unfinished manuscript published posthumously in 1882, is a classic and influential atheist text which sets out the anarchist critique of religion as bound up in legitimising the state. The work criticises Christianity and the technocracy movement from a materialist, anarchist and individualist perspective. God and the State is one of Bakunin's best known works which has been translated into, inter alia, Czech, German, Georgian. Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Polish, Greek, Romanian, Turkish and Yiddish.
Charles-Marie Gustave Le Bon (1841 -1931) was a French polymath who wrote on anthropology, psychology, sociology, medicine and physics. He is best known for his 1895 work 'The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind', which is considered a seminal work of crowd psychology. In the book, Le Bon identifies the primary characteristics of crowd psychology as impulsiveness, irritability, incapacity to reason, the absence of critical judgement, and the exaggeration of feelings. Le Bon claims that an individual immersed for some length of time in a crowd soon finds himself in a special psychological state, which resembles the state in which a hypnotized individual finds himself under the influence of the hypnotizer. One of Le Bon's disturbing insights is that a man descends several rungs in the ladder of civilisation by the mere fact that he forms part of an organised crowd.
'Vrill, The power of the Coming Race' (1870) by Edward Bulwer-Lytton is an early science fiction novel. The setting is a strange subterranean world inhabited by beautiful entities that resemble the angels described in scripture. The advanced beings known as Vril-ya live underground - using the mysterious 'Vril' as an energy source - but intend to reclaim the surface of the earth as their own. The narrator end deep inside the Earth via a natural chasm in a mine shaft. He is rescued by the Vril-ya, an advanced race that use telepathic powers, fly with artificial wings, are served by automata and possess formidable weapons. After a long stay, things go wrong and the protagonist escapes back to the surface with the help of Zee, one of the Vril-ya.
'The Scarlet Letter: A Romance' is a masterpiece of historical fiction set in the Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony from 1642 to 1649. Exploring themes of legalism, sin and guilt, it tells the story of Hester Prynne who conceives a child out of wedlock and then struggles to create a new life of dignity. 'The Scarlet Letter' was one of the earliest mass-produced books in America and a best-seller. It is still highly regarded in literary circles.
'The Raven' is a narrative poem by writer Edgar Allan Poe which is noted for its musical rhythm and supernatural ambiance. It deals with a raven's mysterious visit to a distraught lover, chronicling the poet's descent into madness. The poem makes use of classical, folk, mythological and religious references.
