Benedict Anderson’s 1983 masterpiece Imagined Communities is a ground-breaking analysis of the origins and meanings of “nations” and “nationalism”.A book that helped reshape the field of nationalism s
Michel Foucault is famous as one of the 20th-century’s most innovative and wide-ranging thinkers. The qualities that made him one of the most-read and influential theorists of the modern age find full
Amartya Sen uses his 1999 work Development as Freedom to evaluate the processes and outcomes of economic development.Having come to the conclusion that development is best summed up as the expansion o
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
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
Published in 2010, Bloodlands argues that accounts of World War II have paid too much attention to the atrocities of Adolf Hitler, and not enough to Joseph Stalin's. Snyder believes a definitive histo
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
Paul Kennedy owes a great deal to the editor who persuaded him to add a final chapter to this study of the factors that contributed to the rise and fall of European powers since the age of Spain’s Phi
Michael E. Porter’s 1980 book Competitive Strategy is a fine example of critical thinking skills in action. Porter used his strong evaluative skills to overturn much of the accepted wisdom in the worl
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
Homi K. Bhabha’s 1994 The Location of Culture is one of the founding texts of the branch of literary theory called postcolonialism. While postcolonialism has many strands, at its heart lies the questi
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
