Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason is one of the most influential works in the history of philosophy – not to mention one of the most challenging. Its topic is the nature of human knowledge, and
German sociologist Max Weber’s 1919 lecture Politics as a Vocation is widely regarded as a masterpiece of political theory and sociology. Its central strength lies in Weber’s deployment of masterful i
More than 2,500 years after it was written, Symposium remains a key text for philosophers, historians, writers, artists and politicians. Plato imagines seven important historical figures, including th
Few works of history make as well-structured a case for the importance of studying continuity, rather than change, than Albert Hourani's A History of the Arab Peoples.Hourani’s work had three major ai
In Philosophical Investigations, Ludwig Wittgenstein presents a radical approach to the philosophy of language and the mind, setting out a startlingly fresh conception of philosophy itself. Wittgenste
Published in 1651, Leviathan examines where kings get their authority to rule and what they must, in turn, do for their people. Hobbes argues that kings do not have a divine right to hold power; they
Of all the controversies facing historians today, few are more divisive or more important than the question of how the Holocaust was possible. What led thousands of Germans – many of them middle-aged
A key theme of Gayatri Spivak's work is agency: the ability of the individual to make their own decisions. While Spivak's main aim is to consider ways in which "subalterns" – her term for the indigeno
"How do we know what knowledge is? In his remarkable 1963 article, Gettier proves that Plato's 2000-year-old definition of knowledge is flawed-in just 930 words.
American political scientist Robert Putnam wasn’t the first person to recognize that social capital – the relationships between people that allow communities to function well – is the grease that oils
John Locke’s 1689 Two Treatises of Government is a key text in the history of political theory – one whose influence remains marked on modern politics, the American Constitution and beyond.Two Treatis
Frantz Fanon’s explosive Black Skin, White Masks is a merciless exposé of the psychological damage done by colonial rule across the world. Using Fanon’s incisive analytical abilities to expose the con
How does a state control its citizens? Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish answers this question by investigating the prison system. Foucault argues that prison created and merged into a wider sys
Democracy in America, published in 1835 and 1840, challenged conventional thinking about democracy when it first appeared and is still cited today for its in-depth analysis of what makes a successful
Sun Tzu's The Art of War is a series of lessons in the applied art of problem solving.Sun (544 BC-496 BC), an experienced general from the Warring States period of Chinese history, saw war as an inevi
René Descartes’s 1641 Meditations on First Philosophy is a cornerstone of the history of western thought. One of the most important philosophical texts ever written, it is also a masterclass in the ar
Arjun Appadurai’s 1996 collection of essays Modernity At Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization helped reshape how anthropologists, geographers and philosophers saw and understood the key topic o
There are few better examples of analysis – the critical thinking skill of understanding how an argument is built – than Robert Dahl’s Democracy and its Critics. In this work, the American political t
Theodore Levitt’s 1960 article “Marketing Myopia” is a business classic that earned its author the nickname “the father of modern marketing”. It is also a beautiful demonstration of the problem solvin
To the dismay of many commentators – who had hoped the world was evolving into a more tolerant and multicultural community of nations united under the umbrellas of supranational movements like the Eur
