Books like The Bhagavad-Gita by Barbara Stoler Miller

Active in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Errico Malatesta was a leader in the Italian anarchist movement. A prolific theoretician and propagandist, Malatesta outlined his anarchist views in articles and pamphlets like “Anarchy,” in which he defines anarchy as “society without government,” a situation that will equate to “complete liberty with complete solidarity.” Besides addressing general theoretical issues in his essays, Malatesta also commentated on contemporary events of his lifetime like World War I, during which he penned articles like “Pro-Government Anarchists” criticizing fellow anarchists who took the side of the Entente against the German-led Central Powers.

The Tao Te Ching is a classic Chinese text written around the 6th century BC by Laozi, a Zhou-dynasty courtier. While its authorship is debated, the text remains a fundamental building block of Taoism and one of the most influential works of its time. Today it’s one of the most-translated works in the world.

The work itself is a series of 81 short poetic sections, each one written in a fluid, ambiguous style, leaving them open to wide interpretation. Subjects range from advice to those in power to advice to regular people and adages for daily living. Because of its ambiguous nature the Tao Te Ching is famously difficult to translate, and many, if not all, translations are significantly influenced by the translator’s state of mind. This translation is by James Legge, a famous Scottish sinologist and the first professor of Chinese at Oxford University.