Tocqueville examines the structures, institution and operation of democracy, and analyzes the lessons that Europe could learn from American successes and failures. It continues to be an influential text on both sides of the Atlantic, especially in the emerging democracies of Eastern Europe.

Though the Revised Edition of A Theory of Justice , published in 1999, is the definitive statement of Rawls's view, so much of the extensive literature on Rawls's theory refers to the first edition. This reissue makes the first edition once again available for scholars and serious students of Rawls's work.

Presented in the form of a dialogue between Socrates and three different interlocutors, Republic is an enquiry into the notion of a perfect community and the ideal individual within it. This work addresses the purpose of education and the role of both women and men as 'guardians' of the people.

The Leviathan is the vast unity of the State. But the resurgence of interest in Leviathan is due less to its answers than its methods. This book intends to see politics as a science capable of the same axiomatic approach as geometry. It argues from first principles to human nature to politics.

'Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign'. This title includes an essay that dedicated to this 'one very simple principle'. It records responses to the author's books and comments on his fear of 'the tyranny of the majority'.

This expanded edition of John Stuart Mill's 'Utilitarianism' includes the text of his 1868 speech to the British House of Commons defending the use of capital punishment in cases of aggravated murder. The speech is significant both because its topic remains timely and because its arguments illustrate the applicability of the principle of utility to questions of large-scale social policy.