Penguin Classics

The Bhagavad Gita is a new translation of one of the central texts of Sanskrit, offering a fresh perspective on its timeless teachings. This early epic poem recounts the conversation between Arjuna, the warrior, and his charioteer Krishna, the manifestation of God. In the moments before a great battle, the dialogue sets out the important lessons Arjuna must learn to...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery. The bitter, deformed brother of the King is secretly plotting to seize the throne of England. Charming and duplicitous, powerfully eloquent and viciously cruel, he is prepared to go to any lengths to achieve his goal - and, in his skilful manipulation of...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery. Banishing his cousin, Bolingbroke, King Richard II prevents a dispute from turning bloody. But Richard is an arrogant and despotic ruler, prone to tyranny and vanity, who listens only to his flatterers. As favour turns against him and Bolingbroke returns to reclaim his...

New translation of Dante's masterpiece by acclaimed Robin Kirkpatrick In Purgatorio Dante, having described his journey into Hell, narrates his ascent of Mount Purgatory with Virgil, as he encounters penitents who toil through physical agonies, starvation and flames to assuage their earthly vices. Only by learning from them can he achieve his final enlightened transition to the lost Earthly Paradise...

Erasmus of Rotterdam (c. 1466–1536) is one of the greatest figures of the Renaissance humanist movement, which abandoned medieval pieties in favour of a rich new vision of the individual's potential. Praise of Folly, written to amuse his friend Sir Thomas More, is Erasmus's best-known work. Its dazzling mixture of fantasy and satire is narrated by a personification of Folly,...

New to Black Classics with a New Introduction by Giles Foden Three men trek to the remote African interior in search of a lost friend—and reach, at the end of a perilous journey, an unknown land cut off from the world, where terrible dangers threaten anyone who ventures near the spectacular diamond mines of King Solomon's Mines...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery. An ageing king makes a capricious decision to divide his realm among his three daughters according to the love they express for him. When the youngest daughter refuses to take part in this charade, she is banished, leaving the king dependent on her...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery. Young King Henry wages war on France. But, tainted by his father's crimes, and with enemies among his own men, he must confront the difficult responsibilities of kingship. In rousing speeches, first at the siege of Harfleur where he urges his men 'Once...

Seen as the original Existentialist, Kierkegaard transformed philosophy with his conviction that we must all create our own nature. Fear and Trembling, his great work of religious anxiety portraying Abraham's sacrifice of his son Isaac, argues that true understanding can only be attained by making a personal 'leap of faith'. In Fear and Trembling, Søren Kierkegaard's infamous and controversial work...

A novel of tremendous political relevance now in the giftable hardback series A half-starved young Russian man in a long black overcoat is smuggled into Hamburg at dead of night. He has an improbable amount of cash secreted in a purse round his neck. He is a devout Muslim. Or is he? He says his name is Issa. Poignant, compassionate,...

A marvel of psychological insight from one of the most important Italian literary figures of the twentieth century. This enormously engaging, strange novel is both an engrossing saga of a family and a hilarious account of addiction and failure. Its helpless hero, notionally undergoing psychiatric help, manages spectacularly to fail to give up smoking, run his business, or make sense...

A gorgeous clothbound edition of Jean Rhys's great masterpiece of desire and madness in the Caribbean. Jean Rhys's late masterpiece Wide Sargasso Sea was inspired by Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, and is set in the lush, beguiling landscape of Jamaica in the 1830s. Born into an oppressive, colonialist society, Creole heiress Antoinette Cosway meets a young Englishman who is drawn...

A beautiful new edition to accompany the Brontës' other great novels in Penguin Clothbound Classics. With neither friends nor family, Lucy Snowe sets sail from England to find employment in a girls' boarding school in the small town of Villette. There she struggles to retain her self-possession in the face of unruly pupils, an initially suspicious headmaster, and her own...

Vanity Fair is Thackeray's gloriously satirical epic of love and social adventure, presented in a gorgeous new clothbound edition. Part of Penguin's beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, this edition is designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith. These delectable and collectible editions are bound in high-quality colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design. No one is better equipped in...

Beautifully designed, clothbound edition Part of Penguin's beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, these delectable and collectible editions are bound in high-quality colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design. The Woman in White famously opens with Walter Hartright's eerie encounter on a moonlit London road. Engaged as a drawing master to the beautiful...

One of the great novels of the twentieth century, now in a wonderful new cover. The Rainbow chronicles the lives of three generations of the Brangwen family over a period of more than 60 years, setting them against the emergence of modern England. The central figure of Ursula becomes the focus of Lawrence's examination of relationships and the conflicts they...

A new edition of Henry James's great masterpiece about a spirited young American in Europe, edited by Philip Horne. When Isabel Archer, a beautiful, spirited American, is brought to Europe by her wealthy aunt Touchett, it is expected that she will soon marry. But Isabel, resolved to enjoy her freedom, does not hesitate to turn down two eligible suitors. Then...

Introducing Little Clothbound Classics - irresistible, mini editions of short stories, novellas, and essays from the world's greatest writers, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith. The gift of a handsomely decorated, enigmatic nutcracker sets the stage for a Christmas like no other. There will be legends of ancient curses, battles with the dreaded Mouse King, and a visit to the...

In a fit of drunken anger, Michael Henchard sells his wife and baby daughter for five guineas at a country fair. Over the course of the following years, he manages to establish himself as a respected and prosperous pillar of the community of Casterbridge. However, behind his success always lurks the shameful secret of his past and a personality prone...

A stunning clothbound edition of The Mayor of Casterbridge, a haunting study of guilt and lost love. Part of Penguin's beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, these delectable and collectible editions are bound in high-quality colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design. In a fit of drunken anger, Michael Henchard sells his wife...

The Man Who Was Thursday is G. K. Chesterton's surreal masterpiece, edited and with an introduction by Matthew Beaumont. Can you trust yourself when you don't know who you are? In a park in London, secret policeman Gabriel Syme strikes up a conversation with an anarchist. Sworn to do his duty, Syme uses his new acquaintance to go undercover in...

The Lonely Londoners, an unforgettable account of immigrant experience and one of the great twentieth-century London novels, now in a stunning Clothbound Classics edition. At Waterloo Station, hopeful new arrivals from the West Indies step off the boat train, ready to start afresh in 1950s London. There, homesick Moses Aloetta, who has already lived in the city for years, meets...

One of the greatest novels ever written, now in a wonderful new clothbound edition. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, Laurence Sterne's great masterpiece of bawdy humour and rich satire, defies any attempt to categorise it. Part novel, part digression, its gloriously disordered narrative interweaves the birth and life of the unfortunate 'hero' Tristram Shandy, the eccentric philosophy...

In the final years of his life, Chekhov had reached the height of his powers as a dramatist and also produced some of the stories that rank among his masterpieces. The poignant The Lady with the Little Dog and 'About Love' examine the nature of love outside of marriage — its romantic idealism and the fear of disillusionment. In stories...

New edition of Kipling's best-loved book, featuring such unforgettable characters as Mowgli the man-cub, Baloo the bear and Shere Khan the tiger. The story of Mowgli, the man-cub who is brought up by wolves in the jungles of Central India, is one of the greatest literary myths ever created. As he embarks on a series of thrilling escapades, Mowgli encounters...

The Garden Party and Other Stories comes with an introduction by Lorna Sage. Innovative, startlingly perceptive, and aglow with colour, these fifteen stories were written towards the end of Katherine Mansfield's tragically short life. Many are set in the author's native New Zealand, others in England and the French Riviera. All stories are revelations of the unspoken, half-understood emotions that...

Part of the Les Rougon-Macquart series, The Drinking Den explores two branches of a French family traced through several generations. The behaviour of the two families is depicted as being influenced by environmental factors and inherited characteristics, particularly focusing on themes of drunkenness and mental instability.

A new translation of Stendhal's masterpiece chronicling the fortunes of Febrice del Dongo at an Italian court in post-Napoleonic France. Headstrong and naive, the young Italian aristocrat Fabrizio del Dongo is determined to defy the wrath of his right-wing father and go to war to fight for Napoleon. He stumbles on the Battle of Waterloo, ill-prepared, yet filled with enthusiasm...

The Castle, Kafka's last great, unfinished novel, hangs over the whole modern era like a nightmare. This edition includes a new introduction and notes by John Zilcosky. The Castle tells the story of K., an unwanted Land Surveyor who is never admitted to the Castle nor accepted in the village, yet cannot return home. As he faces the dualities of...

New translation by Roger Whitehouse for this tale of murder, passion, and possession. La Bête humaine (1890), the seventeenth novel in the Rougon-Macquart series, is one of Zola's most violent and explicit works. On one level, a tale of murder, passion, and possession, it is also a compassionate study of individuals derailed by atavistic forces beyond their control. Zola considered...

Introducing Little Clothbound Classics- irresistible, mini editions of short stories, novellas and essays from the world's greatest writers, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith. Few writers have expressed loneliness, the need for human understanding and the search for love with such power and poetic sensibility as the American writer Carson McCullers. The Ballad of the Sad Café is her masterpiece—an...

Who has not dreamed of life on an exotic isle, far away from civilisation? Here is the novel which has inspired countless imitations by lesser writers, none of which equal the power and originality of Defoe's famous book. 'I walk'd about on the shore, lifting up my hands, and my whole being, as I may say, wrapt up in the...

One of the greatest of the Rougon-Macquart series, Zola's prostitute represents the destructiveness of a corrupt and decaying society. Born to drunken parents in the slums of Paris, Nana lives in squalor until she is discovered at the Théâtre des Variétés. She soon rises from the streets to set the city alight as the most famous high-class prostitute of her...

A stunning clothbound edition of William S. Burroughs's cult classic and undoubted masterpiece. A cultural landmark and the most shocking novel in the English language, Naked Lunch is an exhilarating ride into the darkest recesses of the human psyche. An unnerving tale of an addict unmoored in New York, Tangier, and ultimately a nightmarish wasteland known as Interzone, Naked Lunch's...

The searing, tragic French classic in a gorgeous clothbound edition. Madame Bovary is beautiful and bored, trapped in her marriage to a mediocre doctor and stifled by the banality of provincial life. An ardent reader of sentimental novels, she longs for passion and seeks escape in fantasies of high romance, in voracious spending and, eventually, in adultery. But even her...

Part of a series of new editions of Conrad's most famous novels in Black Classics. This compact novel, completed in 1900, as with so many of the great novels of the time, is at its baseline a book of the sea. An English boy in a simple town has dreams bigger than the outdoors and embarks at an early age...

Beautifully designed, clothbound edition Part of Penguin's beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, these delectable and collectible editions are bound in high-quality colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design. Constance Chatterley feels trapped in her sexless marriage to the invalid Sir Clifford. Unable to fulfil his wife emotionally or physically, Clifford encourages her...

Kipling's masterpiece about a boy's journey through imperial India, edited by Harish Trivedi. Kim is Kipling's epic rendition of the imperial experience in India and is also his greatest long work. Two men - Kim, a boy growing into early manhood, and the lama, an old ascetic priest - are fired by a quest. Kim is white, although born in...

Jude the Obscure tells the story of Jude Fawley, a stonemason excluded not by his wits but by poverty from the world of Christminster privilege. He finds fulfilment in his relationship with Sue Bridehead. Both have left earlier marriages. Ironically, when tragedy tests their union, it is Sue, the modern emancipated woman, who proves unequal to the challenge. Hardy's fearless...

The new paperback series- Penguin English Library The Penguin English Library Edition of Howards End by E. M. Forster 'The poor cannot always reach those whom they want to love, and they can hardly ever escape from those whom they love no longer. We rich can' 'Only connect.' is the idea at the heart of this book, a heartbreaking and...

The new paperback series – Penguin English Library. 'The mind of man is capable of anything - because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future. What was there after all? Joy, fear, sorrow, devotion, rage - who can tell? - but truth - truth stripped of its cloak of time. Let the fool gape...

Shipwrecked and cast adrift, Lemuel Gulliver wakes to find himself on Lilliput, an island inhabited by little people, whose height makes their quarrels over fashion and fame seem ridiculous. His subsequent encounters - with the crude giants of Brobdingnag, the philosophical Houyhnhnms, and brutish Yahoos - give Gulliver new, bitter insights into human behaviour. Swift's savage satire views mankind in...

Launching a major new paperback series - Penguin English Library The Penguin English Library Edition of Great Expectations by Charles Dickens "What do you think that is?" she asked me, again pointing with her stick; "that, where those cobwebs are?" "I can't guess what it is, ma'am." "It's a great cake. A bride-cake. Mine!" Great Expectations, Dickens's funny, frightening and...

Author, dramatist, and satirist, Nikolay Gogol (1809-1852) deeply influenced later Russian literature with his powerful depictions of a society dominated by petty bureaucracy and base corruption. This volume includes both his most admired short fiction and his most famous drama. A biting and frequently hilarious political satire, The Government Inspector has been popular since its first performance and was regarded...

Daniel Deronda, George Eliot's last novel, is a richly textured portrait of British society and the Jewish experience within it. As the story opens, Gwendolen Harleth is poised at the roulette-table, prepared to throw away her family fortune. She is observed by Daniel Deronda, a young man groomed in the finest tradition of the English upper classes. While Gwendolen loses...

Beautifully designed, clothbound edition Part of Penguin's beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, these delectable and collectible editions are bound in high-quality colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design. Cranford, Gaskell's best-known work, is set in a small rural town, inhabited largely by women. This is a community that runs on cooperation and...

A beautiful clothbound edition of Waugh's great novel of the lost golden age before the Second World War. The most nostalgic and reflective of Evelyn Waugh's novels, Brideshead Revisited looks back to the golden age before the Second World War. It tells the story of Charles Ryder's infatuation with the Marchmain family and the rapidly disappearing world of privilege they...

Bleak House by Charles Dickens is a Dickensian sweeping family saga, presented in a gorgeous new clothbound edition. Part of Penguin's beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, these delectable and collectible editions are designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith. They are bound in high-quality, colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design. As the interminable case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce...

Sabrina is a firebird blazing through 1950s New York: she is a woman daring to enjoy the sexual licence that men have always known. Weaving a sensual web of deceit as she plays dangerous games of desire, she deliberately avoids commitment, gripped by the pursuit of pleasure for its own sake. In A Spy in the House of Love, Anaïs...

Introducing Little Clothbound Classics—irresistible, mini editions of short stories, novellas, and essays from the world's greatest writers, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith. Beautiful, bored, and bourgeois, Sabina leads a double life inspired by her relentless desire for fleeting romance. But when the secrecy of her affairs becomes too much to bear, Sabina makes a late night phone call to...

A lyrical translation of Kafka's first novel - a menacing allegory of modern life. Karl Rossman has been banished by his parents to America, following a family scandal. There, with unquenchable optimism, he throws himself into the strange experiences that lie before him as he slowly makes his way into the interior of the great continent. Kafka's first novel (begun...

John le Carré takes on counter-terrorism in this furiously paced story of moral dilemma, bold action and unexpected love, now in the giftable hardback series. A counter-terror operation, codenamed Wildlife, is being mounted in Britain's most precious colony, Gibraltar. Its purpose is to capture and abduct a high-value jihadist arms buyer. Its authors are an ambitious Foreign Office Minister and...

Famously associated with the term 'magical realism', Gabriel Garcia Marquez is probably South America's most famous literary export. An acknowledged masterpiece, this is the story of seven generations of the Buendía family and of Macondo, the town they have built. Though little more than a settlement surrounded by mountains, Macondo has its wars and disasters, even its wonders and miracles....

A stunning clothbound edition of Tolstoy's great novel, soon to be a major BBC drama. At a glittering society party in St Petersburg in 1805, conversations are dominated by the prospect of war. Terror swiftly engulfs the country as Napoleon's army marches on Russia, and the lives of three young people are changed forever. The stories of quixotic Pierre, cynical...

Based around a series of blistering confessions, The Fall was described by Sartre as 'perhaps the most beautiful and the least understood' of Camus' novels. Jean-Baptiste Clamence is a soul in turmoil. Over several drunken nights in an Amsterdam bar, he regales a chance acquaintance with his story. From this successful former lawyer and seemingly model citizen, a compelling, self-loathing...

In the vaulted Gothic towers of Notre-Dame lives Quasimodo, the hunchbacked bellringer. Mocked and shunned for his appearance, he is pitied only by Esmerelda, a beautiful gypsy dancer to whom he becomes completely devoted. Esmerelda, however, has also attracted the attention of the sinister archdeacon Claude Frollo, and when she rejects his lecherous approaches, Frollo hatches a plot to destroy...

On an ordinary summer's afternoon, Alice tumbles down a hole and an extraordinary adventure begins. In a strange world with even stranger characters, she meets a grinning cat and a rabbit with a pocket watch, joins a mad tea-party, and plays croquet with the Queen! Lost in this fantasy land, Alice finds herself growing more and more curious by the...

Jane Austen's masterworks in a single beautiful Penguin English Library volume. Few novelists have conveyed the subtleties and nuances of their own social milieu with the wit and insight of Jane Austen. Here in one volume are her seven great novels—Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey, Persuasion, and Lady Susan. Through her vivacious and spirited...

One of the greatest translations of all time, Scott Moncrieff's classic version of Proust, published in three stunning clothbound volumes designed by Coralie Bickford-Smith. Proust's masterpiece is one of the seminal works of the twentieth century, recording its narrator's experiences as he grows up, falls in love, and lives through the First World War. A profound reflection on art, time,...

One of the greatest translations of all time – Scott Moncrieff's classic version of Proust, published in three stunning clothbound volumes designed by Coralie Bickford-Smith. Remembrance of Things Past: Volume 1 is one of the seminal works of the twentieth century, recording its narrator's experiences as he grows up, falls in love and lives through the First World War. A...

The new paperback series - Penguin English Library 'We have all been more or less to blame ... every one of us, excepting Fanny' Taken from the poverty of her parents' home in Portsmouth, Fanny Price is brought up with her rich cousins at Mansfield Park, acutely aware of her humble rank and with her cousin Edmund as her sole...

This sparkling collection of Austen's early writings—some penned when she was just eleven years old—is playful, subversive, and shot through with wit. Jane Austen's brilliant, hilarious—and often outrageous—early stories, sketches, and pieces of nonsense. Jane Austen's earliest writing dates from when she was just eleven years old and already shows the hallmarks of her mature work: wit, acute insight into...

These three short works show Austen experimenting with a variety of different literary styles, from melodrama to satire, and exploring a range of social classes and settings. The early epistolary novel Lady Susan depicts an unscrupulous coquette, toying with the affections of several men. In contrast, The Watsons is a delightful fragment, whose spirited heroine—Emma—finds her marriage opportunities limited by...

90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books Known as Ireland's Chekhov, Frank O'Connor was a master of the modern short story, with an eye for capturing the spaces between our selves and our surroundings. The Genius brings together some of his very best stories, often told from the perspective of young children and forming a revealing portrait of...

Launching a major new paperback series - Penguin English Library The Penguin English Library Edition of Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë 'The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself' Passionate, poetic and revolutionary, Jane Eyre is a novel of naked emotional power. Its story of a defiant, fiercely intelligent woman who...

New translation of a book that has sold over 100,000 in its previous version. A new translation of the idiosyncratic diary of a 10th-century court lady in Heian Japan. Along with the Tale of Genji, The Pillow Book is one of the major Japanese classics.

When Tess Durbeyfield is driven by family poverty to claim kinship with the wealthy D'Urbervilles and seek a portion of their family fortune, meeting her 'cousin' Alec proves to be her downfall. A very different man, Angel Clare, seems to offer her love and salvation, but Tess must choose whether to reveal her past or remain silent in the hope...

The Penguin English Library Edition of A Room with a View by E. M. Forster "But you do," he went on, not waiting for contradiction. "You love the boy body and soul, plainly, directly, as he loves you, and no other word expresses it ..." Lucy has her rigid, middle-class life mapped out for her until she visits Florence with...

A sparkling new translation of the most famous travel book ever written, in a collectable clothbound edition. The Travels by Marco Polo began in 1271 with a visit to China, after which he served the Kublai Khan on numerous diplomatic missions in the Far East. His subsequent account of his travels offers a fascinating glimpse of what he encountered abroad—unfamiliar...

The extraordinary memoir from one of the world's greatest living novelists, now in the giftable hardback series. The Pigeon Tunnel, John le Carré's memoir and his first work of non-fiction, is a thrilling journey into the worlds of his 'secret sharers'—the men and women who inspired some of his most enthralling novels. From terrifying meetings with Yasser Arafat in war-torn...

An intriguing document giving insight into the founders of the Roman Republic. These nine biographies illuminate the careers, personalities, and military campaigns of some of Rome's greatest statesmen, whose lives span the earliest days of the Republic to the establishment of the Empire. Selected from Plutarch's Roman Lives, they include prominent figures who achieved fame for their pivotal roles in...

A compelling narrative of the life of the greatest conqueror of all time—Alexander the Great. Alexander the Great (356-323 BC), who led the Macedonian army to victory in Egypt, Syria, Persia, and India, was perhaps the most successful conqueror the world has ever seen. Yet although no other individual has attracted so much speculation across the centuries, Alexander himself remains...

Fifty new books at £1 each, celebrating the pioneering spirit of the Penguin Modern Classics series, from inspiring essays to groundbreaking fiction and poetry. Now Brando looked at people with assurance, and with what can only be called a pitying expression, as though he dwelt in spheres of enlightenment where they, to his regret, did not. This mesmerizing profile of...

A powerful new anthology of feminist voices throughout history and from around the world. The Penguin Book of Feminist Writing selects writing from across time and throughout the world, creating a treasure-trove of the most important feminist thought alongside surprising and delightful fiction, poetry, and diaries, celebrating the multiplicity of feminist voices that have emerged over the centuries. Beginning in...

The forgotten second volume of Capital, Marx's world-shaking analysis of economics, politics, and history, contains the vital discussion of commodity, the cornerstone to Marx's theories. The forgotten second volume of Capital, Marx's world-shaking analysis of economics, politics, and history, contains the vital discussion of commodity, the cornerstone to Marx's theories.

The Civil War is Caesar's own account of his struggle with Pompey over the leadership of Republican Rome. A military leader of legendary genius, Caesar was also a great writer, recording the events of his life with incomparable immediacy and power. The Civil War offers a tense and gripping depiction of his conflict with Pompey, which spanned the entire Roman...

A vivid and richly anecdotal portrait of Spartan society. On Sparta by Plutarch provides vivid and engaging portraits of the Spartans and their customs, offering a major source of our knowledge about the rise and fall of this remarkable Greek city-state between the sixth and third centuries BC. Through his Lives of Sparta's leaders and his recording of memorable Spartan...

A new edition of these two French accounts written by soldiers who took part in the Crusades. The Conquest of Constantinople by Geoffrey of Villehardouin and The Life of Saint Louis by John of Joinville are eye-witness accounts of going to war in the service of God. In the first years of the thirteenth century, Villehardouin served as an envoy...

Moving from the Modern Classics into the successful Wells series in the Penguin Classics. Spanning the origins of the Earth to the outcome of the First World War, this is a brilliantly compelling account of the evolution of life and the development of the human race. Along the way, Wells considers such diverse subjects as the Neolithic era, the rise...

Annals is presented in a compelling new translation by Cynthia Damon. Tacitus' Annals recounts the major historical events from the years shortly before the death of Augustus to the death of Nero in AD 68. With clarity and vivid intensity, Tacitus describes the reign of terror under the corrupt Tiberius, the great fire of Rome during the time of Nero,...