Few works can claim to form the foundation stones of one entire academic discipline, let alone two, but Thucydides's celebrated History of the Peloponnesian War is not only one of the first great work
Excited by the scientific breakthroughs of the day, David Hume set out to construct a science of the mind. 1748's An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding is the result. A work that had a huge influe
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Ferdinand de Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics is one of the most influential texts of the 20th-century – an astonishing feat for what is, at heart, a series of deeply technical lectures about
Our Common Future, produced in 1987 by a United Nations commission, responded to a growing number of environmental concerns faced by the global community.
The modern vision of the world as one dominated by one or more superpowers begs the question of how best to understand the world-system that existed before the rise of the first modern powers.Janet Ab
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Friedrich Hayek's The Road to Serfdom (1944) analyzes the ways in which excessive government planning can erode democracy. The work draws influential parallels between the totalitarianism of both left
