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 inside it to grasp the seriousness of their predicament. They know in principle that bubbles exist, and they know that the financial crashes that result from them are capable of destroying individuals' wealth and entire economies. Yet whenever and wherever a bubble begins to form, we're told that this time things are different, that there are sound reasons to continue to invest and to presume...
Perhaps the most peculiar feature of a financial bubble – one that Charles Kindleberger's classic work Manias, Panics and Crashes draws particula...
Simone de Beauvoir’s 1949 book The Second Sex is a masterpiece of feminist criticism and philosophy. An incendiary take on the place of women in post-war French society, it helped define major trends in feminist thought for the rest of the 20th century, and its influence is still felt today.
The book’s success owes much to Beauvoir’s brilliant writing style and passion, but both are rooted in the clarity of her critical thinking skills. She builds a strong argument against the silent assumptions that continually demoted (and still demote) women to “second place” in a...
Simone de Beauvoir’s 1949 book The Second Sex is a masterpiece of feminist criticism and philosophy. An incendiary take on the place of women in ...
Thomas Piketty is a fine example of an evaluative thinker. In Capital in the Twenty-First Century, he not only provides detailed and sustained explanations of why he sees existing arguments relating to income and wealth distribution as flawed, but also gives us very detailed evaluations of the significance of a vast amount of data explaining why incomes is distributed in the ways it is.
As Piketty stresses, “the distribution question… deserves to be studied in a systematic and methodical fashion.” This stress on evaluating the significance of data leads him to focus...
Thomas Piketty is a fine example of an evaluative thinker. In Capital in the Twenty-First Century, he not only provides detailed and susta...
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 capitalism-had created the revolutions that launched its path to global supremacy.
Goldstone examines the causes of revolutions and uprisings between 1500 and 1800 in both Europe and Asia. Many thinkers previously believed that Europ...
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 career-it is also an intervention in international relations theory by one of the most famous statesmen of the twentieth century.
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 devel...
Few works of scholarship have so comprehensively recast an existing debate as Chinua Achebe's essay on Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Just because the novel had been accepted into the "canon", Achebe says, does not mean we should not question it closely or criticize its author.
Few works of scholarship have so comprehensively recast an existing debate as Chinua Achebe's essay on Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Just because...
Friedrich Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality is a sustained feat of incisive interpretation. Well known as one of Nietzsche’s greatest works, and as one of the most important books of nineteenth-century philosophy, On the Genealogy of Morality also provided the inspiration for the methodologies of several key philosophers of the modern age. Michel Foucault and Judith Butler, among others, cite Nietzsche as an influence specifically because of the interpretative techniques laid out in this work – techniques which are a model for the ways in which interpretation can be...
Friedrich Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality is a sustained feat of incisive interpretation. Well known as one of Nietzsche’s gr...
Our Common Future is a joint work produced in 1987 by a United Nations commission headed by former Norwegian Prime Minister, Gro Brundtland. Also known as The Brundtland Report, it offers a classic approach to problem solving by first asking a productive question.
How do we protect the world we live in for future generations, while at the same time stimulating economic and social development right now? The solution the work proposes is “sustainable development”, defined in the report as humanity’s ability “to ensure that it meets the needs of the present without...
Our Common Future is a joint work produced in 1987 by a United Nations commission headed by former Norwegian Prime Minister, Gro Brundtland. Also k...
With the ending of World War II in 1945, the Soviet Union and the United States began the decades-long confrontation known as the Cold War. American foreign policy focused on 'containment'-preventing the communist USSR from gaining more ground-and many people looked at the geographical and political implications of this policy.
With the ending of World War II in 1945, the Soviet Union and the United States began the decades-long confrontation known as the Cold War. American f...
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 interpretative skills to power his discussion of modern politics.
Interpretation involves understanding both the meaning of evidence and the meaning of terms – questioning definitions, clarifying terms and processes, and supplying good, clear definitions of the author’s own. As a sociologist accustomed to working with historical evidence, Weber based his own work on...
German sociologist Max Weber’s 1919 lecture Politics as a Vocation is widely regarded as a masterpiece of political theory and sociology...
