The rise of China on the international stage is one of the most significant developments in contemporary geopolitics. Mainstream Western international relations theories argue that the rise of a new g
Thomas Paine’s 1791 Rights of Man is an impassioned political tract showing how the critical thinking skills of evaluation and reasoning can, and must, be applied to contentious issues.Divided into tw
Hume's 1779 book on the existence of God remains vastly influential. Using the conceit of a cleverly crafted fictional conversation, Dialogues argues on the one hand that a universe that looks designe
Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman’s 1974 paper ‘Judgement Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases’ is a landmark in the history of psychology. Though a mere seven pages long, it has helped reshape the
Born in 1961, US anthropologist and activist David Graeber was weaned on leftist politics, and declared himself an anarchist at age 16. He became an anthropology professor, and his early cultural rese
John Dower’s War Without Mercy is an attempt to resolve the problem of why the United States fought World War II so very differently in the Pacific and European theaters. Specifically, the author sets
Henry Kissinger’s 2014 book World Order: Reflections on the Character of Nations and the Course of History not only offers a summary of thinking developed throughout a long and highly influential care
Understanding evidence is critical in a court of law – and it is just as important for critical thinking.Elizabeth Loftus, a pioneering psychologist, made a landmark contribution to both these areas i
Postmodernist thinkers consider history to be not very far removed from a work of fiction, something dependent on historians' own interpretations of the past. Evans, however, argues that we can trust
Goldstone examines the causes of revolutions and uprisings between 1500 and 1800 in both Europe and Asia. Many thinkers previously believed that Europe's distinctive history-particularly the rise of c
One of the primary qualities of good creative thinking is an intellectual freedom to think outside of the box. Good creative thinkers resist orthodox ideas, take new lines of enquiry, and generally co
‘Reconstruction’ is the name given to the period that, beginning shortly before the end of the American Civil War and running until 1877, saw the frustration of federal government's attempts to integr
Reasoning is the critical thinking skill concerned with the production of arguments: making them coherent, consistent, and well-supported; and responding to opposing positions where necessary. The Bet
American political theorist Robert Dahl’s 1961 work of political theory exhibits deep levels of creative thinking. When Dahl wrote, the American system of liberal democracy was generally considered to
Hamid Dabashi’s 1997 work Theology of Discontent reveals a creative thinker capable not only of understanding how an argument is built, but also of redefining old issues in new ways. The Iranian Revol
Our Ecological Footprint presents a powerful model for measuring humanity’s impact on the Earth to reduce the harm we are causing the planet before it’s too late.While some people believe we can find
Tony Judt was born in London in 1948, but spent most of his career in America. He studied history at Cambridge and then earned his doctorate in France. His first major writings were about France's his
Written around 397, Confessions is one of the most referenced works in the Western literary tradition. The initial nine of 13 books draw a compelling narrative of the first 43 years of Augustine's lif
When it was published in 2008, Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein’s Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness quickly became one of the most influential books in modern economics an
Perhaps the most peculiar feature of a financial bubble – one that Charles Kindleberger's classic work Manias, Panics and Crashes draws particular attention to – is the inability of those trapped insi
