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."
All books in this series, published 9 February 2004, have red spines.
01. On the Shortness of Life - Seneca<br /> 02. Meditations - Marcus Aurelius<br /> 03. Confessions - Augustine<br /> 04. The Inner Life - Thomas àKempis<br /> 05. The Prince - Niccolò Machiavelli<br /> 06. On Friendship - Michel de Montaigne<br /> 07. A Tale of a Tub - Jonathan Swift<br /> 08. The Social Contract - Jean-Jacques Rousseau<br /> 09. The Christians and the Fall of Rome - Edward Gibbon<br /> 10. Common Sense - Thomas Paine<br /> 11. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Mary Wollstonecraft<br /> 12. On the Pleasure of Hating - William Hazlitt<br /> 13. The Communist Manifesto - Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels<br /> 14. On the Suffering of the World - Arthur Schopenhauer<br /> 15. On Art and Life - John Ruskin<br /> 16. On Natural Selection - Charles Darwin<br /> 17. Why I Am So Wise - Friedrich Nietzsche<br /> 18. A Room of One's Own - Virginia Woolf<br /> 19. Civilization and Its Discontents - Sigmund Freud<br /> 20. Why I Write - George Orwell
All books in this series, published 25 August 2005, have blue spines.
21. The First Ten Books - Confucius<br /> 22. The Art of War - Sun Tzu<br /> 23. The Symposium - Plato<br /> 24. Sensation and Sex - Lucretius<br /> 25. An Attack on the Enemy of Freedom - Cicero<br /> 26. The Revelation of St John the Divine and The Book of Job<br /> 27. Travels in the Land of Kublai Khan - Marco Polo<br /> 28. The City of Ladies - Christine de Pizan<br /> 29. How to Achieve True Greatness - Baldesar Castiglione<br /> 30. Of Empire - Francis Bacon<br /> 31. Of Man - Thomas Hobbes<br /> 32. Urne-Burial - Sir Thomas Browne<br /> 33. Miracles and Idolatry - Voltaire<br /> 34. On Suicide - David Hume<br /> 35. On the Nature of War - Carl von Clausewitz<br /> 36. Fear and Trembling - Søren Kierkegaard<br /> 37. Where I Lived, and What I Lived For - Henry David Thoreau<br /> 38. Conspicuous Consumption - Thorstein Veblen<br /> 39. The Myth of Sisyphus - Albert Camus<br /> 40. Eichmann and the Holocaust - Hannah Arendt
All books in this series, published 7 August 2008, have green spines.
41. In Consolation to his Wife - Plutarch<br /> 42. Some Anatomies of Melancholy - Robert Burton<br /> 43. Human Happiness - Blaise Pascal<br /> 44. The Invisible Hand - Adam Smith<br /> 45. The Evils of Revolution - Edmund Burke<br /> 46. Nature - Ralph Waldo Emerson<br /> 47. The Sickness Unto Death - Søren Kierkegaard<br /> 48. The Lamp of Memory - John Ruskin<br /> 49. Man Alone with Himself - Friedrich Nietzsche<br /> 50. A Confession - Leo Tolstoy<br /> 51. Useful Work versus Useless Toil - William Morris<br /> 52. The Significance of the Frontier in American History - Frederick Jackson Turner<br /> 53. Days of Reading - Marcel Proust<br /> 54. An Appeal to the Toiling, Oppressed and Exhausted Peoples of Europe - Leon Trotsky<br /> 55. The Future of an Illusion - Sigmund Freud<br /> 56. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction - Walter Benjamin<br /> 57. Books v. Cigarettes - George Orwell<br /> 58. The Fastidious Assassins - Albert Camus<br /> 59. Concerning Violence - Frantz Fanon<br /> 60. The Spectacle of the Scaffold - Michel Foucault
All books in this series, published 27 August 2009, have purple spines.
61. Tao Te Ching - Lao-Tzu<br /> 62. Writings from the Zen Masters - Various<br /> 63. Utopia - Thomas More<br /> 64. On Solitude - Michel de Montaigne<br /> 65. On Power - William Shakespeare<br /> 66. Of the Abuse of Words - John Locke<br /> 67. Consolation in the Face of Death - Samuel Johnson<br /> 68. An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment? - Immanuel Kant<br /> 69. The Executioner - Joseph de Maistre<br /> 70. Confessions of an English Opium-Eater - Thomas de Quincey<br /> 71. The Horrors and Absurdities of Religion - Arthur Schopenhauer<br /> 72. The Gettysburg Address - Abraham Lincoln<br /> 73. Revolution and War - Karl Marx<br /> 74. The Grand Inquisitor - Fyodor Dostoyevsky<br /> 75. On A Certain Blindness in Human Beings - William James<br /> 76. An Apology for Idlers - Robert Louis Stevenson<br /> 77. Of the Dawn of Freedom - W. E. B. Du Bois<br /> 78. Thoughts of Peace in an Air Raid - Virginia Woolf<br /> 79. Decline of the English Murder - George Orwell<br /> 80. Why Look at Animals? - John Berger
All books in this series, published 26 August 2010, have orange spines.
81. The Tao of Nature - Chuang Tzu<br /> 82. Of Human Freedom - Epictetus<br /> 83. On Conspiracies - Niccolò Machiavelli<br /> 84. Meditations - René Descartes<br /> 85. Dialogue Between Fashion and Death - Giacomo Leopardi<br /> 86. On Liberty - John Stuart Mill<br /> 87. Hosts of Living Forms - Charles Darwin<br /> 88. Night Walks - Charles Dickens<br /> 89. Some Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Charles Mackay<br /> 90. The State as a Work of Art - Jacob Burckhardt<br /> 91. Silly Novels by Lady Novelists - George Eliot<br /> 92. The Painter of Modern Life - Charles Baudelaire<br /> 93. The 'Wolfman' - Sigmund Freud<br /> 94. The Jewish State - Theodor Herzl<br /> 95. Nationalism - Rabindranath Tagore<br /> 96. Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism - Vladimir Ilyich Lenin<br /> 97. We Will All Go Down Fighting to the End - Winston Churchill<br /> 98. The Perpetual Race of Achilles and the Tortoise - Jorge Luis Borges<br /> 99. Some Thoughts on the Common Toad - George Orwell<br /> 100. ' - Chinua Achebe
All books in this series, published 24 September 2020, have teal spines.
101. One Swallow Does Not Make a Summer - Aristotle<br /> 102. Being Happy - Epicurus<br /> 103. How To Be a Stoic - Marcus Aurelius, Seneca and Epictetus<br /> 104. Three Japanese Buddhist Monks - Yoshida Kenkà Â, Kamo no Chà Âmei and Saigyà  Hà Âshi <br /> 105. Ain't I A Woman? - Sojourner Truth<br /> 106. Anarchist Communism - Peter Kropotkin<br /> 107. God is Dead - Friedrich Nietzsche<br /> 108. The Decay of Lying - Oscar Wilde<br /> 109. Suffragette Manifestos - Various<br /> 110. ' - Inazo Nitobe<br /> 111. The Freedom to Be Free - Hannah Arendt<br /> 112. What Is Existentialism? - Simone de Beauvoir<br /> 113. The Power of Words - Simone Weil<br /> 114. Reflections on the Guillotine - Albert Camus<br /> 115. The Narrative of Trajan's Column - Italo Calvino<br /> 116. A Tough Mind and a Tender Heart - Martin Luther King Jr.<br /> 117. Steps Towards a Small Theory of the Visible - John Berger<br /> 118. When I Dare to Be Powerful - Audre Lorde<br /> 119. Brief Notes on the Art and Manner of Arranging One's Books - Georges Perec<br /> 120. Why Vegan? - Peter Singer<br />