New Classics

A young lady is kidnapped by a visiting merchant who is enchanted with her. Through divine interference, the ship is beset by a storm and everyone but the lady perishes. Blown up to the North Pole, she inadvertently passes into to another world, the Blazing World, where she is almost immediately made supreme ruler. As the lady begins to exercise her will, Cavendish lays out her own utopia and discusses a wide range of scientific, political, social, and religious topics. But when a war breaks out in her home world, what will the lady do with all power of the Blazing World behind her?

From the beloved author of Anne of Green Gables, L.M. Montgomery - Emily of New Moon (published in 1923) takes us on a journey of loss, friendship, bullying, family dynamics, acceptance, and self-discovery with Emily Byrd Starr, an orphan who must move in with her reluctant Aunt Elizabeth, her loving Aunt Laura, and her jovial and friendly Cousin Jimmy at New Moon on Prince Edward Island.

A man seeks to prove himself as a hero. A monster seeks silence in his territory. A warrior seeks to avenge her murdered son. A dragon ends it all. The familiar elements of the epic poem are seen with a novelist’s eye toward gender, genre, and history - Beowulf has always been a tale of entitlement and encroachment, powerful men seeking to become more powerful, and one woman seeking justice for her child, but this version brings new context to an old story.

The Republic poses questions that endure: What is justice? What form of community fosters the best possible life for human beings? What is the nature and destiny of the soul? What form of education provides the best leaders for a good republic? What are the various forms of poetry and the other arts, and which ones should be fostered and which ones should be discouraged? How does knowing differ from believing?

Sir Francis Bacon's The New Atlantis is a utopian novel about a mythical land called Bensalem, where the inhabitants live happily with the sciences. In The New Atlantis, Bacon focuses on the duty of the state toward science, and his projections for state-sponsored research anticipate many advances in medicine and surgery, meteorology, and machinery. Although The New Atlantis is only a part of his plan for an ideal commonwealth, this work does represent Bacon's ideological beliefs.

The Bhagavad Gita has been called India's greatest contribution to the world. In this audio version of his classic book The Bhagavad Gita: A Walkthrough for Westerners, Jack Hawley makes its wisdom clear to Western seekers.

Wolff here returns with fresh revelations - about biding one's time, or experiencing first love, or burying one's mother - that come to a variety of characters in circumstances at once everyday and extraordinary. A retired Marine enrolls in college while her son trains for Iraq. A lawyer takes a difficult deposition. An American in Rome indulges the Gypsy who's picked his pocket.

Offering both successes and failures from leading companies as a guide, The Innovator's Dilemma gives you a set of rules for capitalizing on the phenomenon of disruptive innovation. Sharp, cogent, and provocative—and consistently noted as one of the most valuable business ideas of all time—The Innovator's Dilemma is the book no manager, leader, or entrepreneur should be without.

This heartwarming fictionalized autobiography tells the story of what it is like for a little girl to be growing up in an unfamiliar place. While other girls her age were enjoying childhood in America, Jean Fritz was in China in the midst of political unrest. During this time, foreigners were becoming more and more unpopular, and evacuation at a moment’s notice was imminent. Although Jean appreciated the beauty of China - the mountains, the countryside, the sea - she knew she belonged in America and longed to make her home there.

On the eve of the First World War, sociology student Vandyck Jennings goes on an expedition with two of his friends to search for a society rumored to consist only of women. On the way to what they will name “Herland,” Van and his friends ponder the type of women they hope or expect to see when they get there … but they find no fantasies when they arrive. Herland is an all-female, community-driven utopia. Van and his friends are skeptical of a society that doesn’t even need men to procreate, but women and girls who live there have been raised in a world removed the patriarchy of the world.

Sartre's greatest novel and existentialism's key text, now introduced by James Wood, and read by the inimitable Edoardo Ballerini. Nausea is the story of Antoine Roquentin, a French writer who is horrified at his own existence. In impressionistic, diary form, he ruthlessly catalogs his every feeling and sensation.

The Emperor loves to wear the most fashionable and finest clothes in the land. However, when two strangers suggest that they can weave him a special suit - which is invisible to anyone who's not worthy and wise - it has to be seen to be believed. A magical retelling of the classic fairy tale, read by Tamsin Greig.

A new re-interpretation of the classic mystical poetic work by the English poet and printmaker William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell is a must-listen for any serious literati or poet - as featured in the movie Dead Man by Jim Jarmusch, starring Johnny Depp.

Here is the incomparable Dr. Seuss' story of an unnamed "you" whose travels through the world involve a series of ups and downs. His ultimate success, however, is "98 and 3/4 percent guaranteed!"

This brilliant new treatment of the world's oldest epic is a literary event on par with Seamus Heaney's wildly popular Beowulf translation. Esteemed translator and best-selling author Stephen Mitchell energizes a heroic tale so old it predates Homer's Iliad by more than a millennium.

Socrates is on trial for his life. He is charged with impiety and corrupting young people. He presents his own defense, explaining why he has devoted his life to challenging the most powerful and important people in the Greek world. The reason is that rich and famous politicians, priests, poets, and a host of others pretend to know what is good, true, holy, and beautiful, but when Socrates questions them, they are shown to be foolish rather than wise.

Brave New World is a dystopian social science fiction novel by English author Aldous Huxley, written in 1931 and published a year later. Largely set in a futuristic World State, whose citizens are environmentally engineered into an intelligence-based social hierarchy, the novel anticipates huge scientific advancements in reproductive technology, sleep-learning, psychological manipulation, and classical conditioning that are combined to make a dystopian society that is challenged by only a single individual: the story's protagonist.

First published in 1979, Joan Didion's The White Album records indelibly the upheavals and aftermaths of the 1960s. Examining key events, figures, and trends of the era—including Charles Manson, the Black Panthers, and the shopping mall—through the lens of her own spiritual confusion, Joan Didion helped to define mass culture as we now understand it. Written with a commanding sureness of tone and linguistic precision, The White Album is a central text of American reportage and a classic of American autobiography.

First published in 1890, this book established psychology as a science and served as the quintessential work in the field for decades. James' intricate studies and paradigm-shifting ideas transformed the way we look at human thought and action. The text covers the core concepts of what it means to be human - brain function, consciousness, discrimination, memory, sensation, imagination, reasoning, and instinct. The book is published in two volumes, the first containing Chapters I through XVI and the second continuing from XVII to XXVIII.

W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne changed the field of strategy and the language of business with their path-breaking "blue ocean strategy", a model for creating uncontested markets that unlock new demand and new opportunities for growth. This audiobook brings together three of their classic blue ocean strategy articles, all first published in Harvard Business Review. This collection is the ideal start, or refresher, for creating more blue oceans.