Aristotle, Rhetoric, trans. W. Rhys Roberts.  Dover Thrift Edition, 2004.  ISBN:  978-0-486-43793-4

Aristotle’s Rhetoric introduced the terms “ethos,” “pathos” and “logos”, which high school students are still required to understand today.  Aristotle was called in the Middle Ages the “Master of Those Who Know;” he is still accepted as one of the two greatest philosophers of all time; his own teacher was the other, Plato, from whom we read two writings in the second quarter.

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Oration on the Dignity of Man (unknown trans.)  CreateSpace pub.  ISBN: 978-1-540-43091-5

Pico’s Oration has often been called “the manifesto of the Renaissance,” and is the first text these students have encountered from that massively important era in Western cultural history. 

Thomas Paine, Common Sense.  Dover Thrift Edition, 1997.  ISBN:  978-0-486-29602-9

Paine’s Common Sense is widely regarded as a major trigger of the American Revolution and provides our first glimpse of America as the embodiment of several Enlightenment emphases, such as freedom and the rule of law.