Mill's famous argument for a liberal, tolerant, pluralistic, democratic political and social philosophy. Appendices include comments by influential contemporaries and reviews from the press of Mill's time.

"Candide" is an accessible masterpiece which demonstrated to the world Volatire's genius as a satirist. The eponymous Candide is a young man tutored by an optimist who is convinced according to the cause and effect philosophy of Leibniz and perhaps is best summarized in Voltaire's leitmotif that human beings live in the "best of all possible worlds." Alexander Pope rather laughably made the same outrageous claim in his "Essay on Man" in which he writes,...

In what has become a landmark of American history and literature, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl recounts the incredible but true story of Harriet Jacobs, born a slave in North Carolina in 1813. Her tale gains its importance from her descriptions, in great and painful detail, of the sexual exploitation that daily haunted her life-and the life of every other black female slave. As a child, Harriet Jacobs remained blissfully unaware that she...

Olaudah Equiano was one of the most prominent people of African heritage involved in the British debate for the abolition of the slave trade. He wrote an autobiography that depicted the horrors of slavery and helped influence British lawmakers to abolish the slave trade through the Slave Trade Act of 1807. This is his story. I hope the reader will not think I have trespassed on his patience in introducing myself to him with some account of the manners...

Mary Rowlandson's The Sovereignty and Goodness of God, first published in 1682, is an English Puritan woman's account of her captivity among Native Americans during Metacom's War (1675-76) in southeastern New England. In this volume, 17 related documents support Rowlandson's text, which is reprinted from the earliest surviving edition of the narrative. - Publisher.