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"Three decades in the making, one of the most ambitious and comprehensive histories of political philosophy in nearly a century. Both a history and an examination of human thought and behavior spanning three thousand years, On Politics thrillingly traces the origins of political philosophy from the ancient Greeks to Machiavelli in Book I and from Hobbes to the present age in Book II. Whether examining Lord Acton's dictum that ""absolute power corrupts absolutely"" or explicating John Stuart Mill's contention that it is ""better to be a human dissatisfied than a pig satisfied,"" Alan Ryan evokes the lives and minds of our greatest thinkers in a way that makes reading about them a transcendent experience. Whether writing about Plato or Augustine, de Toqueville or Thomas Jefferson, Ryan brings a wisdom to his text that illuminates John Dewey's belief that the role of philosophy is less to see truth than to enhance experience. With this unparalleled tour de force, Ryan emerges in his own right as one of the most influential political philosophers of our time."

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"Alan Ryan, after decades at Princeton University, was warden of New College, University of Oxford, where he was a professor of political theory. He is the author of John Dewey and the High Tide of American Liberalism and Bertrand Russell: A Political Life, among other works. David Stifel was born and raised in Denver, Colorado. Bitten early by the acting bug, he studied his craft at the Yale School of Drama. After graduation, he found himself in the usual array of interesting day jobs such as casino porter at Lake Tahoe, ESL teacher in Iran, and Egypt, and video game programmer in the Atari/Intellivision era. Concurrently he worked in films and TV shows for such directors as Steven Spielberg (Minority Report), Danny Boyle (A Life Less Ordinary), and Joel Schumacher (The Number 23). David entered the audiobook field in 2011, when he launched a long-term podcast of serializations of the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Today he is a multi-award-winning narrator with more than 125 audiobooks to his credit. His growing catalog of audiobooks is strong on thrillers, horror, sci-fi, and mysteries. David's rich baritone voice also lends itself very well to nonfiction memoirs and history-popular and academic. His classical acting training makes him very strong with heightened literary language. Pegged as a ""character actor"" from youth, his facility with numerous characters is frequently praised by reviewers and listeners."

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