REVIEWS of LEVIATHAN By Thomas Hobbesp pThe 100 best nonfiction books No 94 - Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes 1651pbrpThomas Hobbes's essay on the social contract is both a founding text of western thought and a masterpiece of wit and imaginationpbrppbrppAccording to the 17th-century historian and gossip John Aubrey, Thomas Hobbes was wont to say that if he had read as much as other men, he should have known no more than other men. As a great thinker, Hobbes epitomises English common sense and the amateur spirit, and is all the more appealing for deriving his philosophy from his experience as a scholar and man of letters, a contemporary and occasional associate of Galileo, Descartes and the young Charles Stuart, prince of Wales, before the Restoration.ppbrppHobbes himself was born an Elizabethan, and liked to say that his premature birth in 1588 was caused by his mother's anxiety at the threat of the Spanish Armada ppbrpp... it was my mother dearppDid bring forth twins at once, both me, and