Aristotle Books

Easton Press Aristotle books:
Aristotle Biography - Library of Great Lives
Politics and Poetics

Franklin Library Aristotle books:
Politics - 100 Greatest Books of All Time - 1977
Work of Aristotle - Great Books of the Western World - 4 books 1978, 1979, 1982, 1984

Aristotle biography
Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), was a Greek philosopher, born in Stagira, a Greek colony on the peninsula of Chalcidice, and educated under the Greek philosopher Plato. His father, Nicomachus, was physician to Amyntas 11, King of Macedonia, father of Philip, and grandfather of Alexander the Great. In Aristotle's seventeenth year he was sent to the school of Plato in Athens, where he remained for twenty years. On the death of Plato, Aristotle withdrew to Mysia and spent three years with Hermeias the "tyrant" of Atarneus, whose sister, Pythias, he afterward married. In 343-42 B.C. he was invited by Philip to Pelia, the capital of Macedonia, to take charge of the education of his young son Alexander (later called "the Great". When Alexander set out upon his Asiatic conquest, in 334 B.C., Aristotle, then in his fifteenth year, returned to Athens and opened in the Lyceum a school of philosophy. Here Aristotle taught for twelve years until, in the disturbed time following Alexander's death in 323 B.C., a charge of impiety was brought against him, and he fled to Chalcis, where Aristotle died.

 

Aristotle's discussion of government in the Politics is so idea packed that it's been argued over ever since being written. It's an empiric description of human nature under various historical circumstances, filled with information on what had happened to former states & what was happening in his own time, coupled with an analysis of the structure of society.
While it's believed Aristotle's Poetics comprised two books on comedy & tragedy only that on tragedy has survived. He taught that tragedy is composed of six elements: plot-structure, character, style, spectacle & lyric poetry. The characters are merely a means of driving the story; & the plot, not characters, is the chief focus of tragedy. Tragedy is the imitation of action arousing pity & fear, & is meant to effect the catharsis of those emotions. He concludes Poetics with a discussion on which is superior: epic or tragic mimesis. He suggests that because tragedy possesses all the attributes of an epic, possibly possesses additional attributes such as spectacle & music, is more unified, & achieves the aim of its mimesis in shorter scope, it's superior.