Shelfology Book Pairing

by Marcus Aurelius

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • “Meditations offers a glimpse into mind, his habits, and his approach to life. . . . I think any reader would find something useful to take away from it.”—James Clear, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Atomic Habits “To me, this is the greatest book ever written. . . . It is the definitive text on self-discipline, personal ethics, humility, self-actualization, and strength. . . . If you’re going to read it, you absolutely have to go with the Gregory Hays translation.”—Ryan Holiday, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Obstacle Is the Way “It is unbelievable to see how the emperor’s words have stood the test of time. . . . Read a page or two anytime you feel like the world is too much.”—Arnold Schwarzenegger, The Wall Street Journal Nearly two thousand years after it was written, Meditations remains profoundly relevant for anyone seeking to lead a meaningful life. Your ability to control your thoughts—treat it with respect. It’s all that protects your mind from false perceptions—false to your nature, and that of all rational beings. A series of spiritual exercises filled with wisdom, practical guidance, and profound understanding of human behavior, Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations remains one of the greatest works of spiritual and ethical reflection ever written. With bite-size insights and advice on everything from living in the world to coping with adversity and interacting with others, Meditations has become required reading not only for statesmen and philosophers alike, but also for generations of readers who responded to the straightforward intimacy of his style. In Gregory Hays’s translation—the first in nearly four decades—Marcus’s thoughts speak with a new immediacy. In fresh and unencumbered English, Hays vividly conveys the spareness and compression of the original Greek text. Never before have Marcus’s insights been so directly and powerfully presented. With an Introduction that outlines Marcus’s life and career, the essentials of Stoic doctrine, the style and construction of the Meditations, and the work’s ongoing influence, this edition makes it possible to fully rediscover the thoughts of one of the most enlightened and intelligent leaders of any era.

by Karl Marx

Celebrating Karl Marx’s 200th Birth Anniversary The Communist Manifesto has been recognized as one of the world’s most influential political manuscripts. Commissioned by the Communist League, it laid out the League’s purposes and program. It presents an analytical approach to the class struggle (historical and present) and the problems of capitalism, rather than a prediction of communism’s potential future forms. The book contains Marx and Engels’ theories about the nature of society and politics, that in their own words, “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” It also briefly features their ideas for how the capitalist society of the time would eventually be replaced by socialism, and then eventually communism. Born in Westphalia in 1820, Friedrich Engels was the son of a textile manufacturer. After military training in Berlin and already a convert to communism, Engels went to Manchester in 1842 to represent the family firm. A relationship with a mill-hand, Mary Bums, and friendship with local Owenites and Chartists helped to inspire his famous early work, The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844. Karl Marx was born in 1818 in Trier, Germany and studied in Bonn and Berlin. Influenced by Hegel, he later reacted against idealist philosophy and began to develop his own theory of historical materialism. He related the state of society to its economic foundations and mode of production, and recommended armed revolution on the part of the proletariat.