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One might think at first glance that this book consists of nothing more than a beautiful binding and magnificent pictures. And then one begins to wonder why an American publisher for an English-speaking audience chose to publish a picture book about the gardens of Winterthur.

Do you also have problems with demigods in white who forget in hospital that they are dealing with people, not bodies? Let us be glad that we have them. Their knowledge saves many human lives. Before the 17th century, doctors could only surmise whether and why a remedy helped in the case of illness. That this changed we owe in part to Descartes' Treatise on Man, which we present to you in this contribution.

What does dictatorship actually feel like? The socialist and humanitarian Vladimir Korolenko lets his readers understand why, as a thinking and feeling person under tsarist rule, he had no other choice but to resist. What is remarkable: he tells his story soberly and without any trace of hatred or agitation.

In Oscar Wilde's utopia, the human being is above all one thing: free. Free from constraints and free in his entirely individual expression. Reflections on how economic and artistic freedom (could) be connected...

Paul Lafargue was the son-in-law of Karl Marx and one of the leading socialists in France. Yet his polemical tract on 'The Right to Be Lazy' was permitted to appear in neither the USSR nor the GDR. Why?

In 1962, Nobel laureate William Faulkner published his last book, 'The Reivers.' It is on the surface an old-fashioned picaresque novel. But whoever reads it automatically asks: which moral principles would I be willing to surrender in order to make money?

Money is indispensable in our daily lives. We use it to buy the first bread roll in the morning and late in the evening to quickly order a jumper in the online shop. But what is money, really, and how does it shape our relationships?

Charles Darwin's theories on evolution laid the foundations for our world view today. Through his hypothesis that nature itself exercises a natural selection and thus creates new species, any intervention by God became superfluous. For us this has long since ceased to be a scandal. In Darwin's time, however, it transformed the view of the world.

A young noblewoman breaks with her family to seek the freedom of an artist's life in the city. Having escaped the shackles of her origins, she soon finds herself subordinated to a new power: that of money. The story of a dependency.

Alfred Russel Wallace published a book in 1869 about his journey to Indonesia. It became an international bestseller that still today bears witness to how Wallace developed his theses on evolution independently of Darwin. He informed Darwin of his theory as early as 1857. Today there are people who therefore claim Darwin stole his fame from his unknown colleague. Can this be true?

It is a simple story about a country excursion beset with obstacles, told from both a French and a Japanese perspective. And that leads us to the question: what can we really know about a foreign culture? And is it permissible to make jokes at another culture's expense?

While 'A Christmas Carol' by Charles Dickens is among the best-known Christmas stories, almost no one today knows his 'The Chimes.' This is understandable, for 'The Chimes' must be read against its historical background. It reflects the British poverty debate of the 1840s.

In the 19th century, the money economy replaced the self-sufficiency of the peasant world even in the most backward villages. Some adapted to the new challenges; others failed in the attempt. The Hungarian politician and novelist Kalman Mikszath portrays different types of money-handlers in a rural setting.

How does a collaborator tick? Is he a conscienceless traitor because he takes the path of least resistance? No, says the message Karagatsis conveys in his 'Bailiff of Kastropyrgos.' It is merely the circumstances of the time that leave the weak person no other choice. Karagatsis knew this from experience: he was a contemporary of the National Socialist occupation of Greece.

It would actually be the perfect story for today: a man of civilisation meets a child of the jungle who teaches him to treat all creatures with respect. The message seems right -- if only it were not conveyed with such arrogance.

Literature can do many things. It can also create realities that did not previously exist. The Russian 'people,' for instance, is an invention of the 19th century, to which Turgenev contributed substantially. Intellectuals first had to move to the countryside to learn that even the Russian people is composed of individuals.

Slowing down, work-life balance, the meaning of life and more: when Michael Ende published his novel 'Momo' in 1973, these were not yet widespread buzzwords but an urgently needed critique of the ideals of German performance-oriented society.

Of course the Reformation was about faith. But it was also about a great deal of money and new economic fields. This article shows a winner of the Zurich change of faith from a quite different perspective. Christoph Froschauer managed the rise from humble printer's apprentice to wealthy publisher. That in doing so he financed the work of Conrad Gessner was above all a question of economic viability.

Charles Dickens still ranks among the most beloved authors of the English-speaking world. This is due to his wonderful characters. They give the reader the illusion of standing on the right, the good side through identification with the loveable poor. Charles Dickens is feel-good literature of the finest kind, especially at Christmas time.

The Manesse volume Anton Chekhov - Master Stories cost 7.70 Swiss francs in the post-war year of 1947. That was a lot of money at the time, and raises the question: what was good literature worth then, and what is it worth to us today?

We believe today that the intellectual division of the United States is new. But when Sinclair Lewis wrote his novel about an ambitious young woman in a small town in the 1920s, this division already existed. Down-to-earth, traditional, deeply conservative: the small town; progressive, tolerant, detached from reality: the big city. The heroine of the story had already observed at the time that small town and big city are not geographical terms but states of mind.

How should a person live in an alien environment? Should he preserve the eternal laws of his ancestors or adapt to his surroundings? These are the questions around which the short stories of Samuel Agnon revolve. He depicts the life of Jews before the catastrophe of the Holocaust: the security of the shtetl, the demands of the capitalist world, and the flight to the promised land of Palestine.

The world changes and the human being changes with it. One resists the change, another welcomes and promotes it. This was already observed by Ivan Turgenev in his generational novel 'Fathers and Sons.' He dissects the various human types and their relationship to changing values.

When does discontent turn into an uprising? What types of rebels are there? And why does an uprising collapse from within? What happens afterwards? The Ukrainian author Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky analyses in detail in his story Fata Morgana the mechanisms that drive a village to revolt -- and this years before the Russian October Revolution.

In 1849/50, Charles Dickens published David Copperfield, one of his most celebrated novels. The story of the small orphan boy who finds his way into bourgeois society despite all obstacles is among the best-known works of world literature. But David Copperfield is not merely a gripping story — it is also a kind of literary guide to middle-class conduct. We illustrate this with three examples. Part 1 addresses the choice of a marriage partner.

From the curriculum of medieval monastic schools to the basic knowledge of every Italian Renaissance painter: Euclid and his works have many facets. Without him and his theory of optics, the central perspective might never have been discovered.

What associations do we have when we speak of 'indigenous peoples'? A life in harmony with nature? A fulfilling sense of community in the village? Precarious conditions under the constant threat of annihilation? All of these are prejudices. That ambition, egotism, and abuse of power existed even among 'indigenous peoples' is illustrated by the novel written by the Mosotho Thomas Mokopu Mofolo. It remains to this day the most significant piece of prose written in the Sesotho language.

The writer Arnold Bennett, little known today, was among the highest-paid authors of his time. He had just one handicap: he was shy. What problems that brings for a man who must live in the public eye was described by Bennett in his novel 'Buried Alive.'

Conrad Gessner owes his reputation above all to his 'Book of Animals.' In it he compiled for the first time all the animals known to science of the day in a kind of encyclopaedia. But there was still a long road ahead to modern zoology.

Anthony Trollope is among the great satirists who commented on the transformation of English society in the 19th century. His novel 'Barchester Towers' indicts the fact that the religious renewal movement concerned itself less with questions of faith than with its own stipends.

She holds up the line at the supermarket checkout. Fumbling awkwardly in her purse for small change. What do you think when you have to wait behind this shabbily dressed old woman? That elderly people are a burden on our society? Czech author Božena Němcová saw it differently: in Babička — meaning 'Grandmother' in English — she describes how an old woman positively influences the lives of those around her.

Adam Smith is one of the central figures of economic history. His 'invisible hand' is still cited today as a central maxim of economic liberalism. However, his view of things was also time-bound. The beginning of industrialisation and the rise of the bourgeoisie gave his theses their impact.

Why does poverty exist, and how can we eliminate it? Around 1800 this question occupied all English people who saw the misery in the slums of industrial cities. The young Malthus found his own answer. He wrote that the rich could not eliminate poverty. For the reason for poverty was the poor person himself.

Italy too has its fascist war crimes. But no Nuremberg trial forced the Italians to take notice of them. A glimpse into the Italian soul is offered by Ennio Flaiano's 'A Time to Kill,' about an absurd adventure during the Abyssinian War.

Martin Luther lived in an era of transition. Traditional economic models were disappearing. The new monetary and fiscal policy was robbing many people of their livelihoods. The Augustinian monk Martin Luther formulated his views in the face of these developments. Some of them were neither progressive nor backward-looking, but simply unworldly.

It is not easy to find justice for one's own position when the adversary is regarded as a saint. Sofya Andreyevna Tolstaya, wife of the Russian national poet Leo Tolstoy, was among the silent losers of history for centuries. Only nearly a century after her husband's death is her position slowly receiving more understanding.

The question of what education people should receive is not new. One book takes us back to the age of humanism, when even the knightly class discovered classical learning for itself. The craft of arms alone could no longer sustain one's livelihood around 1500. And so the question arose: how does one bring Cicero to those who cannot read Latin?

A world without money, what could that look like? At the end of the 19th century, the English socialist William Morris invented such a world. His utopia doesn’t fully explain how such a society would function, but it is an invitation to dream.

In 1904/1905, Max Weber published his ground-breaking work The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. He put forward the thesis that the faith of a population is causally linked to the progress of a country. Today, his theses have long been long considered outdated. But why do they still seem so plausible?

Rousseau is rarely associated with modesty. He begins his "Confessions" often treated as the first modern autobiography, with the announcement that his work is unparalleled in history and that he himself is unique. However, it would be too easy to reduce this complex and complicated personality to its thoroughly self-confident tones.

Stifter polarized despite his romantic-sounding stories. His texts divided the readership. Thomas Mann criticized the old-fashioned, moralizing style, while Friedrich Nietzsche praised his work as a literary icon. What is it about Stifter's texts that some appreciate and others revile?

The subtitle of Wilhelm Raabe's Stopfkuchen is " a sea- and murder story." But don't expect a shallow whodunit because of that. While the reader is still trying to sort out the complex time and space levels of events, he realizes that the novel has an even deeper level...

Grotesque, vulgar, obscene – but also learned, sensitive, subtle. There is no other ancient book as full of excesses as the Satyricon of Titus Petronius. The wealth of ideas, humor and linguistic diversity make this portrait of the mores of the Roman imperial era a pleasure to read!

The world of fantasy literature would look very different today if it wasn’t for the medieval Eddas. After all, the two texts were major source of inspiration for J.R.R Tolkien and his successors. The ancient stories of the Eddas take us into the world of Norse mythology; tell of heroes and gods, of dwarves and giants.

For over 200 years, Paris tourists with a penchant for great love stories have visited the tomb of Abaelard and Heloise. The heartbreaking love letters between the theologian and his pupil are a unique document of the Middle Ages. They tell of a tragic love story - which, as so often, should be questioned.

"Schloß Gripsholm" by Kurt Tucholsky is many things at once: a cheerful summer vacation, a love story told with a twinkle in the eye, a satire on man and his absurd actions and, last but not least, a persiflage of the author on himself. No wonder that many consider it Tuchosky's best work.

Soldier, cardsharp, nobleman: with his description of the fictional career of Barry Lyndon, Thackery takes us on a tour across the social classes of the 18th century. His story of the rise and fall of the Irish upstart is a satirical masterpiece.

In his stories, Arthur Schnitzler set a monument to "ordinary" people. The description of their everyday worries reveals to us: we are not that different from the people in Vienna around 1900.

With the end of First World War, the centuries-long Habsburg monarchy and the splendor of the old Austria also came to an end. It had been looming for some time. No one described this age before the abyss as sensitively and devotedly as Joseph Roth in his novel Radetzkymarsch.

“The most profound book of mankind”, this is how, in all modesty, Friedrich Nietzsche spoke of probably his most popular work, “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”. At that time, the wild child generated buzz among European intellectuals. What is the book actually about? Not an easy question...

Manesse's collection contains, in addition to Kafka's world-famous novel fragments, a multitude of lesser-known tales that are equally fascinating and enigmatic. They have the potential to plunge the reader into deep philosophical crisis - or to merely inspire a cheerful smile.

Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909) dedicates her short stories to her homeland, the New England coast. She lovingly captures the peculiarities of the region and its inhabitants, exploring the contrasting relationship between town and country, civilization and nature. Join her to the land of the pointed firs.

Personal freedom versus moral values: Since the beginning of English settlement in North America, this conflict has shaped the history of the United States, and continues to do so to this day. Nathaniel Hawthorne devoted his novel "The Scarlet Letter." to this contradiction in 1850.

In 1881, Tsar Alexander II was assassinated, although he initiated comprehensive reforms. After all, no one in Russia any longer believed that the tsar and the nobility could bring about political improvement. They are discredited, and novels like Oblomov, published in 1859, have contributed to this.

Welcome to Erewhon, a fascinating non-place between utopia and dystopia that is both a reflection and a parody of our society. In his satirical novel "Erewhon" from 1872, Samuel Butlers raises surprisingly topical questions about technology and humanity.

Who were these men with whom the Spanish built their Empire? What is the nature of someone who sails into the unknown, to capture gold and silver in the New World for the Spanish King? Anyone looking for an answer to this question will find it in the autobiography of Captain Alonso de Contreras.

The Fiddler on the Roof is one of the most famous musicals of all time. It is based on Scholem Alejchem's novel Tewje, der Milchmann. The humorous stories about a Jewish dairyman, told with sensitivity and wit, made Alejchem one of the most important authors of Yiddish-language literature.

Would you like to get to know a bestseller from the Middle Ages? It's about blood and violence and yet everything ends well. No, we're not talking about a soap opera, but about the Legenda aurea by Jacobus de Voragine.

In 1755 the earth trembled and left the city of Lisbon in ruins. Voltaire took this as an opportunity to reflect on this "dear" God in "Candide". Its basic question is, how a good God can tolerate evil in the world. Is the world completely abandoned by God? Read on.

Gulliver's Travels didn't start as a children's book, but as a spiteful and apt criticism of his contemporaries. If you want to know who Jonathan Swift was teasing with his Houyhnhnms and the Brobdingnags, read on.

Patrick Süskind has created a classic with his drama about the man with the double bass. How does it feel to be at the back of the shadows loving the woman in the spotlight. Read why the answer to this question found such a wide audience.

The description of his journey to Asia in the 13th century made him famous. Like no other, Marco Polo, a Venetian merchant and adventurer, stands for wanderlust and the desire for the exotic. His travelogue is without doubt a milestone.

This fable is one of the post-war classics par excellence: Orwell's "Animal Farm". It masterfully illustrates how well-intentioned ideas for a better life for all can quickly turn into their opposite. Intended as a critique of Stalinism, the book's basic cautionary message can easily be applied to today's ideologies.

Find out what significance Proper Mérimée has for our imagination of the French past and why it is still worth reading a book today that deals with the bloody conflict between Huguenots and Catholics.

In Italy, Manzoni's historical novel The Betrothed is still taught in schools. Find out why here with us.

A power-hungry captain and an intellectual castaway: they are fascinated by each other. In The Sea Wolf, Jack Londons depicts the clash of ultimate pragmatism and urban ideals. How does it end? Continue reading.

"Clothes make the man", Gottfried Keller illustrates the truth of this proverb in a story from Seldwyla. Not only this story shows how well Keller knew human nature. That is why his book, written in the mid-19th century, is still worth reading today.

Do you like fantasy? Then you will love E.T.A. Hoffmann! At the beginning of the 19th century, he created fantasy worlds to escape from his daily routine as a lawyer. Lose yourself with us in his dream worlds.

This thriller brought about a turning point: in it, the good investigator no longer fights the bad criminal, but good and bad are mixed in many layers. But that's what makes this novel so exciting.

Shortly before the end of the Second World War, when Europe was ravaged by violence and destruction, the Zurich publishing house Conzett & Huber began a series of books that tied with the spirit of reason and humanity. The German prince of poets Goethe was one of the first authors to be published. Here you will read, why.

Fontane's literary mastery is evident in his seminal novel Effi Briest. From today's perspective, the conventions and constraints described therein seem hardly comprehensible. You can find out here why it is still worth reading this book.

Sherlock Holmes is the father of all detectives. With him, Conan Doyle created the pattern every television inspector is still modelled on today. Join us to have a look at the beginning of the crime novel.

Dostoyevsky’s Idiot illustrates that the opposite of "good" is not "evil" but "well intentioned". "The idiot" wants to do good and fails terribly, and that’s relevant today: Finally, our world has become so complex that nobody can know for sure what’s good and what’s bad for it.

Dante's Divine Comedy is the most important work in Italian literary history and at least parts of it belong to the “Splatter and Blood” genre. Even then, people simply enjoyed reading about how the wicked are punished in the most horrific ways.

Cervantes' novel about the Knight of Sorrowful Countenance is world literature. His "tilting at windmills" is part of the English vocabulary. Even more than 400 years later, this book is still a pleasure to read.

It could be so simple: a man and a woman fall in love, get married and live happily together – not so with Charlotte Brontë. In Jane Eyre she showed how complicated it can be and thus created topoi that have become the standard in romance novels.

No book by Bradbury is as topical as his parable of the decline of written expression. If you don't want to hurt anyone, don't write anything. If you want to make everyone equal, those unwilling to learn are your benchmark, TV is your tool. The Fahrenheit 451 society sees no other solution than to burn all the books.

More than 70 years ago, Ray Bradbury wrote a masterpiece of science fiction and psychology: How do people behave in the face of the stranger? How do the seemingly defenseless strangers fight back? The colonization of Mars provides the backdrop for a study in human error.

This book was a scandal! Never before had an author written so explicitly about the dark side of the big cities. With his Fleurs du Mal, Charles Baudelaire paved the way for poetry describing today’s world.

A graceful lady of the castle, a heroic knight, dragons to conquer, vows of love – what reads like the conventional ingredients for a classic medieval novel can be traced back to this book, among others. Without a doubt, this work manifests one of the origins of German-language literature.

What's it like waking up and being stuck in a donkey skin? The Roman author Apuleius shows his readers their everyday life from the perspective of a donkey. The Golden Donkey is a funny satire and a realistic picture of the ancient Mediterranean world.

Andersch's probably most important novel takes us back to the time of National Socialism. Five completely different people give themselves up in search of freedom, but recognize more and more clearly the limitations of their possibilities and the constraints of their existence. The plot inevitably leads us to ask how we would have acted in those times.

It is a truism that life comes easier for beautiful people. While we are ashamed of our superficiality today, educated contemporaries of the 18th and 19th century read Lavater, who told them why their preconceived ideas were justified.

If there is one man responsible for shaping how women were viewed by educated men for centuries, it’s Giovanni Boccaccio. His book ‘On Famous Women’ inspired artists of both sexes.

Every now and then, you will still find beautifully embellished letters patent for people who did not make it into any history book. They are a wonderful record of the society of the Ancien Régime – a society in which every commoner sought personal nobility, even under the enlightened ruler Joseph II.

The 19th century saw dramatic technological progress. Thanks to the railway, steam boats, and the expansion of transport networks, man could travel the world faster than ever before. In his novel, Jules Verne writes about the fascination with this progress.

In 1984 Alphaville want to be forever young, wanna be forever young… In 2013, Lana del Rey wonders, “Will you still love me when I’m no longer young and beautiful?” But is eternal youth really the answer? Oscar Wilde’s novel raises serious doubts.

When the American deck-hand Gale, while on shore leave in Antwerp, misses the departure of his freighter, he does not know what catastrophic events he has just set in motion: the extinction of his existence …

It’s the most sought-after metal in the world: In the Middle Ages, alchemists tried to produce it from scratch in vain, in the Early Modern world people persistently searched for it in rivers and mountains. A novel about the power of gold.

We tend to believe we’re constantly reinventing the wheel. We’re not. Take any contemporary trend, from “tiny houses” to “minimalism” to “tidying up with Marie Kondo” – Henry David Thoreau was already living them 200 years ago.

What do you associate with the word “pirate”? Far-away treasure islands, buried treasure chests, peg legs, and parrots on the shoulder? That is thanks to the Scottish author R. L. Stevenson, who with his novel created the mother of all pirate stories.

One fateful night Viktor Frankenstein creates his monster – that much most of us know. But who created Frankenstein, the book that is, and why?

As a lyrical form, the sonnet is relatively simple and at the same time extremely versatile, the all-rounder of poems, so to speak. That made it so popular at times that practically everyone wrote them. Including, of course, William Shakespeare.

How many US-American ministers from German descent do you know? There is Henry Kissinger, of course, known for the role during the Cold War. If you can’t think of anyone else, keep on reading. Because he wasn’t the only one.

Samuel Johnson said about this novel you would have to hang yourself if you read it for the plot. Why Richardson’s work, to this day, triggers head shaking and moral outrage but also empathy.

Can real Socialism overcome man’s greed for money? If you read the book “The Golden Calf” authored by the two Soviet writers Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov, you have to answer the question clearly with a “no”.

As early as 1860 the author of “Max Havelaar” called attention to the exploitative and inhuman conditions under which colonial goods were produced and traded. Unfortunately, most of the products we consume today are still not “fair trade.”

Being obsessed with an idea is perhaps a problem in real life but it does make for good literature. Viktor Frankenstein is obsessed with bringing a dead back to life. Jay Gatsby with the American Dream. And Captain Ahab with hunting the white whale.

The “Knigge” has suffered the same fate as many other famous books: It says something completely different than what we think it says. The real Knigge, after all, was not interested in prescribing stiff rules of behavior but in creating respectful interpersonal relations.

Do you know psycho thrillers which feature uncanny children or children possessed by demons as protagonists? The innocence we associate with the child in combination with its apparent corruption always makes for a particularly spine-chilling experience. Henry James wrote an early precursor of such modern thrillers.