Peregrine books

"This classic book brings to life imperial Rome as it was during the second century A.D., the time of Trajan and Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius and Commodus. It was a period marked by lavish displays of wealth, a dazzling cultural mix, and the advent of Christianity. The splendor and squalor of the city, the spectacles and the day's routines are reconstructed from an immense fund of archaeological evidence and from vivid descriptions by ancient poets, satirists, letter-writers, and novelists - from Petronius to Pliny the Younger. In a new Introduction, the classicist Mary Beard appraises the book's enduring - and sometimes surprising - influence and its value for general readers and students. She also provides an up-to-date Bibliographic Essay."--BOOK JACKET.

In the first volume of his trilogy, noted political philosopher Maurice Cranston draws from original manuscript sources to trace Rousseau's life from his birth in provincial obscurity in Geneva, through his youthful wanderings, to his return to Geneva in 1754 as a celebrated writer and composer.

"First published 1940." Bibliographical footnotes.

A wide-ranging collection of essays which discuss ancient societies, and our interpretation of historical artefacts and documents in relation to historical viewpoints.

"George Steiner's Tolstoy or Dostoevsky has become a classic among scholars of Russian literature. An essay in poetic and philosophic criticism that bears mainly on the Russian master, Tolstoy or Dostoevsky deals also with larger themes: the epic tradition extending from Homer to Tolstoy; the continuity of a "tragic world view" from Oedipus Rex to King Lear and The Brothers Karamazov; the contrasts between the epic and dramatic modes, between irreconcilably opposed views of God and of history."--BOOK JACKET.

Examines the development and nature of the city from Egypt to Mesopotamia, Greece, Rome and the Middle Ages to the modern world.