Written during a moment in English history when the political and social structures were in flux and open to interpretation, Leviathan played an essential role in the development of the modern world.

PETER BLEGVAD's cult comic strip LEVIATHAN ran for seven years in The Independent on Sunday review. It was memorably described by Simpsons creator Matt Groening as "one of the greatest, weirdest things I've ever stared at". Quirky and referential, dark and droll, by turn, Blegvad's cartoons are indeed unlike anything else in print.THE BOOK OF LEVIATHAN assembles the cream of Levi and Cat's adventures in a 160pp hardback - startlingly produced, with flat-bound, mirrored cover boards and full colour printing throughout. It is an object to treasure, and a snip at £12.99

First published in 1938, The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes used the Enlightenment philosopher's enduring symbol of the protective Leviathan to address the nature of modern statehood.

In Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes's landmark work on political philosophy, James Martel argues that although Hobbes pays lip service to the superior interpretive authority of the sovereign, he consistently subverts this authority throughout the book by returning it to the reader. Martel demonstrates that Hobbes's radical method of reading not only undermines his own authority in the text, but, by extension, the authority of the sovereign as well. To make his point, Martel looks closely at Hobbes's understanding of religious and rhetorical representation. In Leviathan, idolatry is not just a matter of worshipping images but also a consequence of bad reading. Hobbes speaks of the "error of separated essences," in which a sign takes precedence over the idea or object it represents, and warns that when the sign is given such agency, it becomes a disembodied fantasy leading to a "kingdom of darkness." To combat such idolatry, Hobbes offers a method of reading in which one resists the rhetorical manipulation of figures and tropes and recognizes the codes and structures of language for what they are-the only way to convey a fundamental inability to ever know "the thing itself." Making the leap to politics, Martel suggests that following Hobbes's argument, the sovereign can also be seen as idolatrous--a separated essence--a figure who supplants the people it purportedly represents, and that learning to be better readers enables us to challenge, if not defeat, the authority of the sovereign.

One of the most challenging passages in the book of Job is the Lord's long description of a hippopotamus and crocodile. In this NSBT, Eric Ortlund argues that Behemoth and Leviathan are better understood as symbols of cosmic chaos and evil, helping readers appreciate the reward of Job's faith (and ours) as we endure in trusting God while living in an unredeemed creation.

With the creation of an unholy beast comes the end of the world in this diabolical thriller from the international bestselling author of Crux and Hunter. On an Icelandic Island, an illegal experiment intended to create the perfect biological weapon has transformed a once-innocent creature into the biblical Leviathan that once terrorized the world. Able to shatter steel and granite as easily as it can melt the strongest containment shields, Leviathan escapes from its pen and is loose in a vast underground chamber harboring soldiers and scientists. The installation cannot allow Leviathan to reach the surface. For if Leviathan reaches the world, it could well be the end of the Earth. They must hold the line, here, and destroy it . . . even if they must detonate a last-chance nuclear failsafe built into the chamber itself. But, first, they must fight with every weapon at their disposal to discover if the beast can be killed at all. It is a battle many will not survive. As soldiers and scientists are vaporized by Leviathan’s hellish flame, or ripped apart by the dragon’s claws and fangs, a lone electrical engineer is forced to join the fight. And in the midst of what might well be the last battle for Mankind, Connor must find a way—any way—to save his family and kill this powerful, bloodthirsty Beast of Legend that has never been killed before. Before it feasts upon the world. Praise for James Byron Huggins “Huggins writes like a man possessed.”—Steve Jackson, New York Times bestselling author “May be the thriller of the year.”—BookPage on Cain “Pure entertainment.”—Publishers Weekly on Hunter

Leviathan and the Air-Pump examines the conflicts over the value and propriety of experimental methods between two major seventeenth-century thinkers: Thomas Hobbes, author of the political treatise Leviathan and vehement critic of systematic experimentation in natural philosophy, and Robert Boyle, mechanical philosopher and owner of the newly invented air-pump. The issues at stake in their disputes ranged from the physical integrity of the air-pump to the intellectual integrity of the knowledge it might yield. Both Boyle and Hobbes were looking for ways of establishing knowledge that did not decay into ad hominem attacks and political division. Boyle proposed the experiment as cure. He argued that facts should be manufactured by machines like the air-pump so that gentlemen could witness the experiments and produce knowledge that everyone agreed on. Hobbes, by contrast, looked for natural law and viewed experiments as the artificial, unreliable products of an exclusive guild. The new approaches taken in Leviathan and the Air-Pump have been enormously influential on historical studies of science. Shapin and Schaffer found a moment of scientific revolution and showed how key scientific givens--facts, interpretations, experiment, truth--were fundamental to a new political order. Shapin and Schaffer were also innovative in their ethnographic approach. Attempting to understand the work habits, rituals, and social structures of a remote, unfamiliar group, they argued that politics were tied up in what scientists did, rather than what they said. Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer use the confrontation between Hobbes and Boyle as a way of understanding what was at stake in the early history of scientific experimentation. They describe the protagonists' divergent views of natural knowledge, and situate the Hobbes-Boyle disputes within contemporary debates over the role of intellectuals in public life and the problems of social order and assent in Restoration England. In a new introduction, the authors describe how science and its social context were understood when this book was first published, and how the study of the history of science has changed since then.

The first novel in a masterful trilogy by #1 New York Times bestselling author Scott Westerfeld that School Library Journal hailed is "sure to become a classic." It is the cusp of World War I. The Austro-Hungarians and Germans have their Clankers, steam-driven iron machines loaded with guns and ammunition. The British Darwinists employ genetically fabricated animals as their weaponry. Their Leviathan is a whale airship, and the most masterful beast in the British fleet. Aleksandar Ferdinand, a Clanker, and Deryn Sharp, a Darwinist, are on opposite sides of the war. But their paths cross in the most unexpected way, taking them both aboard the Leviathan on a fantastical, around-the-world adventure….One that will change both their lives forever.

All his life, Philip Hoare has been obsessed by whales, from the gigantic skeletons in London's Natural History Museum to adult encounters with the wild animals themselves. Whales have a mythical quality - they seem to elide with dark fantasies of sea-serpents and antediluvian monsters that swim in our collective unconscious. This book is an investigation into what we know little about -- dark, shadowy creatures who swim below the depths, only to surface in a spray of spume. More than the story of the whale, it is also the story of our own obsessions.

Policymakers worry that "ungoverned spaces" pose dangers to security and development. Why do such spaces exist beyond the authority of the state? Earlier scholarship—which addressed this question with a list of domestic failures—overlooked the crucial role that international politics play. In this shrewd book, Melissa M. Lee argues that foreign subversion undermines state authority and promotes ungoverned space. Enemy governments empower insurgents to destabilize the state and create ungoverned territory. This kind of foreign subversion is a powerful instrument of modern statecraft. But though subversion is less visible and less costly than conventional force, it has insidious effects on governance in the target state. To demonstrate the harmful consequences of foreign subversion for state authority, Crippling Leviathan marshals a wealth of evidence and presents in-depth studies of Russia's relations with the post-Soviet states, Malaysian subversion of the Philippines in the 1970s, and Thai subversion of Vietnamese-occupied Cambodia in the 1980s. The evidence presented by Lee is persuasive: foreign subversion weakens the state. She challenges the conventional wisdom on statebuilding, which has long held that conflict promotes the development of strong, territorially consolidated states. Lee argues instead that conflictual international politics prevents state development and degrades state authority. In addition, Crippling Leviathan illuminates the use of subversion as an underappreciated and important feature of modern statecraft. Rather than resort to war, states resort to subversion. Policymakers interested in ameliorating the consequences of ungoverned space must recognize the international roots that sustain weak statehood.