Penguin Great Ideas is a series of largely non-fiction books published by Penguin Books. Titles contained within this series are considered to be world-changing, influential and inspirational. Topics covered include philosophy, politics, science and war. The texts for the series have been extracted from previously published Penguin Classics and Penguin Modern Classics titles and purged of all editorial apparatus, making them appear as standalone texts. The concept of repurposed extracts was inspired by an earlier Penguin series produced in the mid-1990s, the Penguin's 60 Classics, which were extracts of classic texts published in a small book format at the time of Penguin's 60th anniversary. The typographic cover designs of the series have been highly praised, winning prizes such as a D&AD award in 2005. The overall series is divided into six series of twenty books, each about one hundred and twenty pages long. Most books contain a notable essay, often by a very well known writer. Some of these are slightly shortened. The third series features additional works by the previous series' most popular writers: Albert Camus, Sigmund Freud, Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, George Orwell and John Ruskin. The fourth series includes a third essay by Orwell, and additional works by Michel de Montaigne, Arthur Schopenhauer, Karl Marx and Virginia Woolf. The fifth series was announced as the last in 2010, but after a decade long hiatus a new sixth series was set for release on 24 September 2020. Series six is notable for including a more diverse group of authors. The mission statement of series one to five was: "GREAT IDEAS. 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." The mission statement of series six is: "One of twenty new books in the bestselling Penguin Great Ideas series. This new selection showcases a diverse list of thinkers who have helped shape our world today, from anarchists to stoics, feminists to prophets, satirists to Zen Buddhists."

Books

Series One (2004)

All books in this series, published 9 February 2004, have red spines. 01. On the Shortness of Life - Seneca 02. Meditations - Marcus Aurelius 03. Confessions - Augustine 04. The Inner Life - Thomas à Kempis 05. The Prince - Niccolò Machiavelli 06. On Friendship - Michel de Montaigne 07. A Tale of a Tub - Jonathan Swift 08. The Social Contract - Jean-Jacques Rousseau 09. The Christians and the Fall of Rome - Edward Gibbon 10. Common Sense - Thomas Paine 11. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Mary Wollstonecraft 12. On the Pleasure of Hating - William Hazlitt 13. The Communist Manifesto - Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels 14. On the Suffering of the World - Arthur Schopenhauer 15. On Art and Life - John Ruskin 16. On Natural Selection - Charles Darwin 17. Why I Am So Wise - Friedrich Nietzsche 18. A Room of One's Own - Virginia Woolf 19. Civilization and Its Discontents - Sigmund Freud 20. Why I Write - George Orwell

Series Two (2005)

All books in this series, published 25 August 2005, have blue spines. 21. The First Ten Books - Confucius 22. The Art of War - Sun Tzu 23. The Symposium - Plato 24. Sensation and Sex - Lucretius 25. An Attack on the Enemy of Freedom - Cicero 26. The Revelation of St John the Divine and The Book of Job 27. Travels in the Land of Kublai Khan - Marco Polo 28. The City of Ladies - Christine de Pizan 29. How to Achieve True Greatness - Baldesar Castiglione 30. Of Empire - Francis Bacon 31. Of Man - Thomas Hobbes 32. Urne-Burial - Sir Thomas Browne 33. Miracles and Idolatry - Voltaire 34. On Suicide - David Hume 35. On the Nature of War - Carl von Clausewitz 36. Fear and Trembling - Søren Kierkegaard 37. Where I Lived, and What I Lived For - Henry David Thoreau 38. Conspicuous Consumption - Thorstein Veblen 39. The Myth of Sisyphus - Albert Camus 40. Eichmann and the Holocaust - Hannah Arendt

Series Three (2008)

All books in this series, published 7 August 2008, have green spines. 41. In Consolation to his Wife - Plutarch 42. Some Anatomies of Melancholy - Robert Burton 43. Human Happiness - Blaise Pascal 44. The Invisible Hand - Adam Smith 45. The Evils of Revolution - Edmund Burke 46. Nature - Ralph Waldo Emerson 47. The Sickness Unto Death - Søren Kierkegaard 48. The Lamp of Memory - John Ruskin 49. Man Alone with Himself - Friedrich Nietzsche 50. A Confession - Leo Tolstoy 51. Useful Work versus Useless Toil - William Morris 52. The Significance of the Frontier in American History - Frederick Jackson Turner 53. Days of Reading - Marcel Proust 54. An Appeal to the Toiling, Oppressed and Exhausted Peoples of Europe - Leon Trotsky 55. The Future of an Illusion - Sigmund Freud 56. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction - Walter Benjamin 57. Books v. Cigarettes - George Orwell 58. The Fastidious Assassins - Albert Camus 59. Concerning Violence - Frantz Fanon 60. The Spectacle of the Scaffold - Michel Foucault

Series Four (2009)

All books in this series, published 27 August 2009, have purple spines. 61. Tao Te Ching - Lao-Tzu 62. Writings from the Zen Masters - Various 63. Utopia - Thomas More 64. On Solitude - Michel de Montaigne 65. On Power - William Shakespeare 66. Of the Abuse of Words - John Locke 67. Consolation in the Face of Death - Samuel Johnson 68. An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment? - Immanuel Kant 69. The Executioner - Joseph de Maistre 70. Confessions of an English Opium-Eater - Thomas de Quincey 71. The Horrors and Absurdities of Religion - Arthur Schopenhauer 72. The Gettysburg Address - Abraham Lincoln 73. Revolution and War - Karl Marx 74. The Grand Inquisitor - Fyodor Dostoyevsky 75. On A Certain Blindness in Human Beings - William James 76. An Apology for Idlers - Robert Louis Stevenson 77. Of the Dawn of Freedom - W. E. B. Du Bois 78. Thoughts of Peace in an Air Raid - Virginia Woolf 79. Decline of the English Murder - George Orwell 80. Why Look at Animals? - John Berger

Series Five (2010)

All books in this series, published 26 August 2010, have orange spines. 81. The Tao of Nature - Chuang Tzu 82. Of Human Freedom - Epictetus 83. On Conspiracies - Niccolò Machiavelli 84. Meditations - René Descartes 85. Dialogue Between Fashion and Death - Giacomo Leopardi 86. On Liberty - John Stuart Mill 87. Hosts of Living Forms - Charles Darwin 88. Night Walks - Charles Dickens 89. Some Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Charles Mackay 90. The State as a Work of Art - Jacob Burckhardt 91. Silly Novels by Lady Novelists - George Eliot 92. The Painter of Modern Life - Charles Baudelaire 93. The 'Wolfman' - Sigmund Freud 94. The Jewish State - Theodor Herzl 95. Nationalism - Rabindranath Tagore 96. Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism - Vladimir Ilyich Lenin 97. We Will All Go Down Fighting to the End - Winston Churchill 98. The Perpetual Race of Achilles and the Tortoise - Jorge Luis Borges 99. Some Thoughts on the Common Toad - George Orwell 100. An Image of Africa - Chinua Achebe

Series Six (2020)

All books in this series, published 24 September 2020, have teal spines. 101. One Swallow Does Not Make a Summer - Aristotle 102. Being Happy - Epicurus 103. How To Be a Stoic - Marcus Aurelius, Seneca and Epictetus 104. Three Japanese Buddhist Monks - Yoshida Kenkō, Kamo no Chōmei and Saigyō Hōshi 105. Ain't I A Woman? - Sojourner Truth 106. Anarchist Communism - Peter Kropotkin 107. God is Dead - Friedrich Nietzsche 108. The Decay of Lying - Oscar Wilde 109. Suffragette Manifestos - Various 110. Bushido: The Soul of Japan - Inazo Nitobe 111. The Freedom to Be Free - Hannah Arendt 112. What Is Existentialism? - Simone de Beauvoir 113. The Power of Words - Simone Weil 114. Reflections on the Guillotine - Albert Camus 115. The Narrative of Trajan's Column - Italo Calvino 116. A Tough Mind and a Tender Heart - Martin Luther King Jr. 117. Steps Towards a Small Theory of the Visible - John Berger 118. When I Dare to Be Powerful - Audre Lorde 119. Brief Notes on the Art and Manner of Arranging One's Books - Georges Perec 120. Why Vegan? - Peter Singer