The Art of War
Thirteen chapters, cut to what matters and regrouped into eight ideas you can use: calculation, deception, speed, position, and more. Original illustration on every chapter.
Meditations
A Roman emperor's private notebook, never meant for readers. Judgment, control, the present, nature, change, duty, fellowship, mortality. Eight ideas, eight illustrated plates.
The Prince
Statecraft without illusions, cut to eight ideas: virtù, arms, war, realism, fear, cruelty, cunning, fortune. Original illustration on every chapter.
The Sayings of Lao Tzu
The oldest voice in the canon, cut to eight ideas: the way, inaction, yielding, hollow, humility, return, contentment, beginnings. Giles's own selection, not the full Tao Te Ching.
The Encheiridion
A slave who became philosophy's plainest teacher of what is and is not yours to control. Eight ideas, eight illustrated plates.
The Analects
Character, learning, and rightness, from the teacher himself alone. Eight ideas, eight illustrated plates.
On the Shortness of Life
Rome's most practical Stoic on the one thing you cannot buy back: time. The full essay, cut to its sharpest passages, followed by his best letters.
The Art of Worldly Wisdom
Three hundred maxims on discernment, patience, and mastery of self, cut to eight ideas and illustrated for this edition.