Colorado Parks & Wildlife Research Library

"Aristotle said that philosophy begins with wonder, and the first Western philosophers developed theories of the world which express simultaneously their sense of wonder and their intuition that the world should be comprehensible. But their enterprise was by no means limited to this proto-scientific task. Through, for instance, Heraclitus' enigmatic sayings, the poetry of Parmenides and Empedocles, and Zeno's paradoxes, the Western world was introduced...

"These three major plays represent a decisive turning-point in Ibsen's scheme of values." "Hurt and dismayed by the hostile reception of Ghosts in 1881, Ibsen published, a year later, the uncompromising An Enemy of the People. Its protagonist, Dr Stockmann, finds himself up against an alliance of political hypocrisy and vested interest when he attempts to reveal that the town's public baths, its civic pride and joy, are seriously polluted. The Wild...

This anthology brings together a stimulating and entertaining collection of works from the confident and creative period of 1660-1700. The literature of this time is by turns refined, poignant, and brash. Alongside major works such as Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel and Mac Flecknoe, printed in their entirety, is a substantial group of lyrics by Rochester, while Milton's Paradise Lost provides a running commentary on the Restoration scene. Scurrilous...

"Brought up by her widowed father in a remote English castle, Arabella resorts to reading the French novels popular in her mother's youth, and in the solitude of this Arcadia paints a picture of her life as adventurous and deeply romantic. When her father dies, however, she inherits a barbed legacy: if she is not to lose part of the estate it appears she must marry her cousin Glanville. But Arabella has developed a different, private code of conduct...

"Plutarch's biographies of eminent Greeks and Romans are renowned not just for their historical importance but also for their insights into the personalities they describe. In prose that is rich, elegant, and sprinkled with learned references, Plutarch explores with an extraordinary degree of insight the interplay of character and political action. He portrays virtues to be emulated and vices to be avoided, but his purpose is implicitly to warn and...

The first Pulitzer Prize for literature awarded to a woman was for The age of innocence, Edith Wharton's elegant portrait of desire and betrayal in Old New York. In the highest circle of New York social life during the 1870s, Newland Archer, a young lawyer, prepares to marry the docile May Welland. But before their engagement is announced, he meets the mysterious, nonconformist Countess Ellen Olenska, May's cousin, who has returned to New York after...