Leviathan (Audio Classics Series)

Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

George H. Smith is an author, editor, educator, and speaker. His first book was the very popular Atheism: The Case against God. Smith began teaching in the 1970s and for nearly twenty years spent his summers instructing university students in political philosophy and American political and intellectual history at seminars sponsored by the Cato Institute and the Institute for Humane Studies. His many articles and book reviews have appeared in a wide range of publications, including Reason, the New York Times, and the Journal of Libertarian Studies.

Paul Meier, MD, is a psychiatrist at the Meier Clinics in Richardson, Texas, and the author of more than eighty books, including Love Is a Choice, Happiness Is a Choice, Blue Genes, and Everything I Learned Since I Knew It All. He has appeared on hundreds of radio and television programs over the past thirty years, including shows with Oprah, Tom Snyder, Norman Vincent Peale, Joyce Meyer, Sheila Walsh, Paula White, and many others. He is also the founder of the national chain of counseling clinics called the Meier Clinics, a nonprofit corporation.

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) was born in Wiltshire, England. Educated at Oxford, where he studied classics, he later became tutor to the son of William Cavendish, Baron of Hardwick. His first published work was a translation of Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War in 1628. An interest in science and philosophy soon developed, heightened by extended travels in Europe. This led to Leviathan--the crowning achievement of his political science. It was so influential that it came under widespread attack and was in danger of condemnation by the House of Commons. Hobbes perforce lived quietly and published little more on political matters. At the age of eighty-four, he composed an autobiography in Latin verse and within the next three years translated the whole of Homer's Odyssey and Iliad.