Top-Shelf Ideas at Bargain-Shelf Prices

As part of the ongoing hoopla over its 70th anniversary, Penguin has put together a "Great Ideas" series that--in its American release today--honors a dozen great thinkers spanning the history of Western civilization, from Seneca (On the Shortness of Life) to Orwell (Why I Write).* The covers are simply breathtaking, perhaps the most elegant paperbacks of Marcus Aurelius's Meditations or Machiavelli's The Prince you'll find--and, at just $8.95 each, among the most affordable outside of Dover editions. Heck, I don't even know where else you're going to find Hazlitt's On the Pleasure of Hating.

Penguin has been kind enough to provide me with three sets of all twelve books in the American series. If you bought them all at once tomorrow (when they officially go on sale), that would be $107.40. Amazon isn't offering any discount, and the Barnes & Noble website only offers 10 percent off--that's still nearly $97. But for the first three readers to respond to this offer, the complete set can be had for a contribution of just $50.

*The UK series published last year had an additional eight titles, and editor Simon Winder discussed his reasoning behind the whole enterprise, reminding us that "every revolution has been led by disturbingly well-read people stuffed with Great Ideas which they have want to put into practice."