Romeo and Juliet was the first drama in English to confer full tragic dignity on the agonies of youthful love. The lyricism that enshrines their death-marked devotion has made the lovers legendary in every language that possesses a literature.

As entertaining today as it was when first published in 1726, "Gulliver's Travels" has been read by generations of children as an adventure story and by adults as a devastating satire of society.

"In the Origin of Species (1859) Darwin challenged many of the most deeply held beliefs of the Western world. Arguing for a material, not divine, origin of species, he showed that new species are achieved by 'natural selection'. Development, diversification, decay, extinction and absence of plan are all inherent to his theories. Darwin read prodigiously across many fields; he reflected on his experiences as a traveler, he experimented. His profoundly...

Presents Burton Raffel's translation of the fourteenth-century English poem in which a mysterious green-skinned knight interrupts Christmas at Camelot and presents a dangerous challenge, to which Sir Gawain steps up.