Plato. 
 
Basic Books: 1968. Fifth printing. Hardcover in a jacket. Octavo. Dust jacket has small scratches across the top and bottom and two small chunks missing from the spine. Drops from an old spill on the top stain. The textblock is slightly frayed, and the spine is faded. 487 pages. Very good. 
 
Join the circle of Athenian youths questioning and arguing with Socrates. Bloom's famous translation emphasizes literalness to keep the irony of Socrates' rhetoric and the dramatic intensity of the dialogue. No better way to study it to witness Plato the artist and Plato the philosopher united, inventing political philosophy while provoking you to think. 
 
"'Alright,' I said, 'since it has become apparent that neither justice nor the just is this, what else would one say they are?'"