A Discourse on Inequality, Jean-Jacques Rosseau, 1764
Rosseau seeks to prove how civilization has corrupted the happy, enlightened state of natural man by enabling wealth, privilege, and social power to destroy the basic freedom and equality of the average citizen in a modern state.
Germinal, Emile Zola, 1885
A novel of suffering, strength of will, and unrest set in French coal-mining settlements. Zola describes the perilous and exploitative conditions of the miners, and illustrates with gripping realism the illness, hunger, uncertainty, and the omnipresent poverty of the miners and their families perpetuated by the all-consuming capitalistic system of the late Industrial Age.
The Selected Writings of Guillaume Appollinaire, 1971
A collection of Apollinaire's dynamic poetry, translated and with an introduction by Robert Shattuck. This work includes Apollonaire's late Symbolist-era verse, prose, and ideograms, along with a brief biography by Shattuck.