Despite not being an active participant in the English Civil War, seventeenth-century political thinker James Harrington exercised an important influence on the ideas and politics of that crucial period of history. In The Commonwealth of Oceana he sought to explain why civil war had broken out in 1642, to put the case for commonwealth government, and to offer a detailed constitutional blueprint for a new and successful English government. In this intellectual biography of Harrington, Rachel Hammersley sets a fresh analysis of this and Harrington's other writings against the background of his life and the turbulent period in which he lived. In doing so, this study seeks to move beyond the conventional view of Harrington as primarily a republican thinker, offering a broader and more comprehensive account of him which addresses the complexity of his republicanism as well as exploring his contributions to economic, historical, religious, philosophical, and scientific debates; his experimentation with vocabulary and literary form; and the relationship between his life and thought. Harrington is presented as an innovative political thinker, committed to democracy, social mobility, and meritocracy. Ultimately, this broader examination of Harrington's life and work opens a window on political, economic, religious, and scientific issues which serve to complicate understandings of the English Revolution, and sheds fresh light on the relevance of seventeenth-century ideas to the modern world.

James Harrington (1611-1677) was a pioneer in applying the methods of Machiavelli and other civic humanists to English political society and its landed structure. In the century after his death, his ideas were adapted to become an important ingredient in the vocabulary of both English and American political opposition to the methods of Hanoverian parliamentary monarchy. This work includes all of his prose works on political subjects as well as Oceana, his best-known work. The critical introduction attempts to revalue the evidence concerning Harrington's life and writings, to locate them in the context of Civil War, Commonwealth and Puritan thinking and to trace the development of Harringtonian and neo-Harringtonian ideology during subsequent generations.

James Harrington's Magnifica crosses fantasy with reality, bringing mythological creatures like elves, sorcerers, and dwarves into the modern day world. Many places may be recognizable, but their histories are very different. In this alternate world, humans have built the same great cities we know today, but they share the land with elves and dwarves. The story begins on a college campus in Massachusetts where an unremarkable young man is about to meet someone who will change his life forever. Things unravel fast, forcing our hero to make tough decisions that will affect the world and those he cares about most.