"An infamous Renaissance classic, The Prince shocked Europe upon publication with its ruthless tactics for gaining absolute power and its abandonment of conventional morality. Niccolo Machiavelli even came to be regarded by some as an agent of the Devel, his name taken for the intriguer "Machevill" of Jacobean tragedy. For his treatise on statecraft Machiavelli drew upon his own experience of office under the turbulent Florentine republic, rejecting...

Poems and Songs of Robert Burns Robert Burns - Robert Burns (1759 – 1796) called himself "an Aeolian harp strung to every wind of heaven." His first volume of poems, entitled Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, was published in 1786. An immediate success, it established Burns's poetic reputation, which has grown over two centuries to the point where he is not only the Scottish national poet but the object of a cult unique in British poetry. The...

"An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (generally referred to by the short title The Wealth of Nations) is the masterpiece of the Scottish economist and moral philosopher Adam Smith. It was first published in 1776. It is an account of economics at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, as well as a rhetorical piece written for the generally educated individual of the 18th century - advocating a free market economy as more...

This is Charles Darwin's chronicle of his five-year journey, beginning in 1831, around the world as a naturalist on the H.M.S. Beagle.

"'As I walk'd through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place, where was a Denn; And I laid me down in that place to sleep: And as I slept I dreamed a Dream.'" "So begins one of the best-loved and most widely read books in English literature. An acknowledged classic of the heroic Puritan tradition, and a founding text in the development of the English novel, The Pilgrim's Progress has inspired readers for over three centuries. The...

This dramatic autobiography of the early life of an American slave was first published in 1845, when its young author had just achieved his freedom. Douglass' eloquence gives a clear indication of the powerful principles that led him to become the first great African-American leader in the United States. The personal account of a fugitive slave's privation and sufferings and his campaigns for Negro emancipation. This dramatic autobiography of the...

Hundreds of millions of people in China, India, Indonesia, and Brazil are eager to enter the marketplace. Yet multinational companies typically pitch their products to emerging markets' tiny segment of affluent buyers, and thus miss out on much larger markets further down the socioeconomic pyramid-which local rivals snap up. By applying the authors' recommendations, you can position yourself to compete innovatively in developing countries-and to unlock...

In a world where the only certainty is uncertainty, the one sure source of lasting competitive advantage is knowledge. The best companies survive by consistently creating new knowledge, disseminating it widely throughout the organization, and quickly leveraging it in their business processes and their products. In The Knowledge-Creating Company, Ikujiro Nonaka shows how your company can exploit its knowledge to continually innovate and reinvent itself...

Managing your boss: Isn't that merely manipulation? Corporate cozying up? Not according to John Gabarro and John Kotter. In this handy guidebook, the authors contend that you manage your boss for a very good reason: to do your best on the job-and thereby benefit not only yourself but also your supervisor and your entire company. Your boss depends on you for cooperation, reliability, and honesty. And you depend on him or her for links to the rest of...

In an age when managers can no longer rely on formal power, persuading people is more important than ever. Persuasion is a process of learning from colleagues and employees and negotiating shared solutions to solving problems and achieving goals. In The Necessary Art of Persuasion, Jay Conger describes four essential components of persuasion and explains how to master them, providing the information you need to fulfill your managerial mandate: getting...