Professor J. Rufus Fears presents his choices of some of the most essential writings in history. These are works that shaped the minds of great individuals and that offer an extraodrdinary gift of wisdom to those willing to receive it. Focus is on intellectual history and ethics, taking the underlying ideas of each great work and revealing how these ideas can be put to use in a moral and ethical life. From the Aeneid and the Book of Job to Othello and 1984, the range in time is from the 3rd millennium B.D. to the 20th century, and in locale from Mesopotamia and China to Europe and America.