Sensation and Sex

Following the overwhelming success of <I>Great Ideas</I>' launch, with a million sold in the UK alone, Penguin now publish a further 20 short, astonishing works of non-fiction drawn from the most remarkable writing of the past two and a half thousand years of human thinking.

Elegant, insightful and startlingly modern, the philosophy of Lucretius deeply influenced the course of European thought; here, he provides one of the first accounts of atomic theory, argues that there can be no life of the soul after death, and explores the sickness that we call love.

Titus Lucretius Carus must have been born soon after 100 BC, and was probably already dead when his poem was given to the world in 55 BC.  He was a Roman citizen and a friend of Gaius Memmius, an eminent Roman statesman, and his poem was read and admired by Cicero.

Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives - and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are. <br/>
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Elegant, insightful and startlingly modern, the philosophy of Lucretius deeply influenced the course of European thought; here, he provides one of the first accounts of atomic theory, argues that there can be no life of the soul after death, and explores the sickness that we call love.

Lucretius

Richard Jenkyns

A. E. Stallings

One of the most extraordinary classical translations of recent times

A.E. Stallings's brilliant recent translation

The Nature of Things

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Lucretius

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One of the most extraordinary classical translations of recent times

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