Modern Political Thought: A Reader is an excellent introduction to the key works of the major political thinkers from the English Civil War to the end of the 19th Century. It draws together the most important parts of seminal works of political thought such as Hobbes' Leviathan, Locke's Treatises, Rousseau's The Social Contract, Mill's On Liberty, together with substantial extracts from Machiavelli's The Prince and Marx's Capital. Accessible introductions are provided for each thinker, explaining their lives and works, and placing them in the historical context in which they worked and wrote.
This book was used in my Political Philosophy class and it was a good companion to the lectures we've had. A nice selection of thinkers and interesting introductions to each of them.
I use this as a reader for my political thought class - it has snippets of primary text from Machiavelli to Marx. Mostly I assign it because my students can get it for cheap online, and it's not a 15-pound uncut tome like some of the other 'classics of political philosophy' texts I have, which are problematic both on portability and first-time-readability grounds.