... a first-rate edition, which supersedes all other portable Peirces.... all the Peirce most people will ever need." -Louis Menand, The New York Review of Books The Monist essays are included in the first volume of the compact and welcome Essential Peirce; they are by Peirce's standards quite accessible and splendid in their cosmic scope and assertiveness."-London Review of Books A convenient two-volume reader's edition makes accessible to students and scholars the most important philosophical papers of the brilliant American thinker Charles Sanders Peirce. This first volume presents twenty-five key texts from the first quarter century of his writing, with a clear introduction and informative headnotes. Volume 2 will highlight the development of Peirce's system of signs and his mature pragmatism.