This volume collects the essential thinkers on government and politics. Rather than merely presenting them chronologically, it organizes them around the perennial challenges of political life, including the purpose of government, the tension between freedom and order, and the nature of justice and ethics.

Table of Contents: Abraham Lincoln --Thomas Jefferson --John Locke --Thomas Hobbes --Niccolò Machiavelli --Jean-Jacques Rousseau --Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels --Edmund Burke --Alexis de Tocqueville --William Graham Sumner --Herbert Croly --Aristotle.