Showing results by publisher "Simply Media" in Classics

> Walking is not as well known as Thoreau's other works Walden, The Maine Woods, and Civil Disobedience. But it is a good place to start exploring his writing because it was his last book, in 1862, published by the Atlantic Monthly shortly after his death. It is less well known because it is general, as opposed to singular, in focus. It is his summing up of his thoughts on life: One should saunter through life and take notice; one need not go far.

"White Nights" is the third major Dostoyevsky short story that everyone should read or listen to, along with "A Faint Heart" and "The Christmas Tree and Wedding". The story contains a series of Winesburg, Ohio-like moments: a woman and man meet on the First Night; proceed to meet again on the Second and Third, almost fall in love, and at the last minute the former lover of the woman returns to take her away. But the point is that the man had a glorious moment....

The brilliance of this story is in how a normal bureaucrat, a judge in this case, has a small accident that winds up gradually taking his life. As he deals with this incident, with hope at first and then despair, he comes to terms with his family, his life, and the mediocrities that we all suffer with, except for the exceptional few. This story rings a particularly poignant note for those in early middle age facing the next part of their lives. This story is considered Tolstoy's best.

An historical romance set in London and the English countryside with remarkable nuance and descriptions about dress, parties, houses, men and women and their dealings with each other, with special insights into marriage. A wonderful ode to our better selves and what we can be if we move beyond the bumps and bruises in life.

Plato's Allegory of the Cave is what many believe to be the foundation of Western Philosophy. It addresses what is visible and invisible, seen and observed versus intuited and imagined, and what is public versus private and just versus unjust. It also concerns the meaning and importance of education, the state of the soul, the conflict between truth and beauty, animal urges versus higher aspirations, knowledge versus ignorance, and on and on.

The legendary ironic insightful classic by Voltaire, considered the greatest artistic genius of his era. Introducing the legendary, best-of-all-possible-worlds Pangloss. A whirlwind trip around the globe with irony, wit, insight, genius, and more at each stop.

A story about privacy and its importance for happiness and personal fulfillment.

Some consider The Great Gatsby the greatest American novel ever written about love, dreams, business, bootlegging, Wall Street, the Midwest, and the East, as well as Yale, prep schools, the rich, and more. F. Scott Fitzgerald followed up with Tender Is the Night, also considered equally compelling.

An early 20th Century tale about a booster & businessman who followed the standard program, deviated, and wished his son well in going his own way.

The Pulitzer Prize novel describes the tradeoffs between medical research & money making & much more.

Rare insights into Kafka stories, thoughts, philosophy, aging, friendship, love, sex & marriage with his rare insights and thoughts.

A historical romance set in London, a small English town, and Paris. Remarkably well-crafted, with nuanced male and female characters, this book launched Georgette's 53-book best-selling career.

The last great 19th-century Russian novelist brings his symbolism together with realism, to blend real and fictional people together in the Russian revolutionary period of 1905 that laid the seeds for the 1917 dark Soviet period that Bely anticipates, set in the Paris of Russia, St Petersburg. An intriguing fantasy mixed with reality, dark and bright colors, with a dose of romanticism.

A breathtaking story of a woman marrying, growing up, bravely persevering, and seeing what traditionally was a man's point of view with the insights of a woman growing up in the same way. An insightful novel in so many ways.

Freud's landmark work about the pleasure principle covering ancient times to his own: psychology, arts, literature, science, biology, and social science.

Maggie: A Girl of the Streets is a ground breaking novel relating to the precarious state of women in the new industrial world at the end of the 19th century. One blemish on a reputation and a woman would often be banned from her house, subject to earning her living on the streets, and often dying young as Maggie does.

A Kafka story with remarkable insight into the relationship, competition, fear, envy, and more between father and son.

This classic novel describes an ambitious poor relative of a rich man who secures an opportunity in his uncle’s factory and has a social leap to prospectively marry another rich man’s daughter in town. Similar to Gatsby and published in the same year, 1925.

The Prince is considered the all-time best book on political strategy. It has of late become a much-referred-to book for all competitive situations. Machiavelli's name is associated closely with his philosophy, as he well deserves. His other works are worth reading or hearing, as well, especially his Art of War and Belfagor: The Devil Who Took a Wife.

The classic transformation story by Kafka. A man is transformed into a bug and how everyone deals with the situation from his mother and father, to his employer and paying boarders, and himself.