Need to seize a country? Have enemies you must destroy? In this handbook for despots and tyrants, the Renaissance statesman Machiavelli sets forth how to accomplish this and more, while avoiding the awkwardness of becoming generally hated and despised. "Men ought either to be well treated or crushed, because they can avenge themselves of lighter injuries, of more serious ones they cannot; therefore the injury that is to be done to a man ought to be...

"Emile is an imaginary student put forth by Rousseau to illustrate his idea of 'negative education,' in other words, education in harmony with a child's natural capacity through a process of autonomous discovery. Rousseau removes the authoritative, domineering teacher figure, and instead wants mothers to encourage children's natural tendencies, without coddling or spoiling them. The work was controversial in its own time, but later inspired a new...