In a panoramic survey of the Victorian Age, this work describes the men and women who brought the modern age into being. The capitalist world was challenged by the ideas of such men as Karl Marx, William Morris and George Bernard Shaw - here they are. Here are also the lofty and famous and here too are the poor and the obscure.

From the foundation of the world's first democracy in Athens to the Roman Republic and the Empire under Hadrian, this title presents the turbulent histories of Greece and Rome together. Discussing figures such as Homer, Socrates, Alexander, Julius Caesar, Augustus and the first Christian martyrs, it explores freedom, justice, and luxury.

Nowadays, the Enlightenment is often judged harshly for its simplistic optimism. Peter Gay revisits the sources to show that the Enlightenment's increasing scientific method and belief in reason marked the beginning of the modern age.

This work completes the author's reinterpretation begun in The Enlightenment: The Rise of Modern Paganism . It describes the programme of the philosophes and their views of society, with the aim of providing insights into the Enlightenment's critical method and its human and libertarian vision.

A biography of a major figure in the 17th century cultural and scientific revolutions.

'Yet another compulsively readable, astonishingly encyclopaedic book from Roy Porter!his best to date: an epic, one-volume narrative history of man's struggle with the infirmities of his body, from Aesculapius to AIDS.' SIMON SCHAMA