Marcel Mauss’s 1925 essay The Gift is an enduring classic of sociological and anthropological analysis by a thinker who is one of the founding fathers of modern anthropology.The Gift exploits Mauss’s high-level analytical and interpretative skills to produce a brilliant investigation of the forms, meanings, and structures of gift-giving across a range of societies. Mauss, along with many others, had noted that in a wide range of societies – especially those withou...

The impact of William James’s 1890 The Principles of Psychology is such that he is commonly known as the father of his subject. Though psychology itself is a very different discipline in the 21st-century, James’s influence continues to be felt – both within the field and beyond. At base, Principles was designed to be a textbook for what was then an emerging field: a summary and explanation of what was known at that point in time. As its continuing influence shows, though,...

A critical analysis of Karl Marx’s Capital, which is without question one of the most influential books to be published in the course of the past two centuries. Controversial in its politics, and arriving at conclusions that are passionately debated to this day, it is nonetheless a fine example of the creative combination of a philosophical method (the dialectic) with historical and economic information to produce a new interpretation of history.Capitalism, thought Marx, w...

C.K. Prahalad and Gary Hamel’s 1990 The Core Competence of the Corporation helped redefine traditional ideas of management strategy. It did so by focusing companies on one of the key critical thinking skills: evaluation. In critical thinking, evaluation is all about judging the strengths and weaknesses of arguments – assessing their reasoning and the relevance or adequateness of the evidence they use. For Prahalad and Hamel, companies could gain a competitive edge by evaluating th...

In The Gift (1925), Marcel Mauss elevates a simple gift from the status of innocent object to something that has the capacity to motivate people and define social relationships. The Gift analyzes cultures across the world and across time, examining the ways gifts are given and received to understand the rules and traditions of many different societies. Gifts can be tangible, like jewelry, or intangible, like the offering of skills. But binding relationships are always created when gifts ar...

William worked on The Principles of Psychology throughout the 1880s, while teaching psychology and philosophy at Harvard University. He drew together various styles of science to create a unified whole and establish psychology as a valid discipline that connects many different areas—including philosophy, biology, and medicine—and helps us understand that the physical and mental are intertwined. He also created concepts—such as thoughts happening in a “stream of consciousness”—that have fou...

Foucault - The Key Ideas is a concise introduction to the life, works and ideas of this ground-breaking modern philosopher. This book will not only guide you through the events of Foucault's life and help you to understand his most complex ideas with ease; it will also demonstrate the practical impact of those ideas on life today. Covering everything from Foucault's views on the philosophy and sociology of knowledge to his analysis of power and institutions in society, this book offers a f...

The Road to Serfdom, F. A. Hayek’s 1944 warning against the dangers of government control, continues to influence politics more than seventy years after it was turned down by three American publishers and finally published by the University of Chicago Press. A classic work in political philosophy, intellectual and cultural history, and economics, the definitive edition of The Road to Serfdom included this essay as its Introduction. Here, acclaimed Hayek biographer and gen...

Ideology is one of the most controversial terms in the political vocabulary, exciting both revulsion and inspiration. This book examines the reasons for those views, and explains why ideologies deserve respect as a major form of political thinking. It investigates the centrality of ideology both as a political phenomenon and as an organizing framework of political thought and action. It explores the changing understandings of ideology as a concept, and the arguments of the main ideologies....

This is a book about what many teachers know but are increasingly being prevented from talking about: that real education always involves a risk. The risk is there because, as W. B. Yeats has put it, education is not about filling a bucket but about lighting a fire. It is there because students are not to be seen as objects to be moulded and disciplined, but as subjects of action and responsibility. The Beautiful Risk of Education is organised around a critical discussion of seven key educ...

A blend of history, analysis, and theory, "Understanding Socialism" is an honest and approachable text that knocks down false narratives, confronts failures and challenges of various socialist experiments throughout history, and offers a path to a new socialism based on workplace democracy. "Richard Wolff's book is the best accessible and reliable treatment we have of what socialism is, was, and should be.” - Cornel West “In the same accessible style that has made his programs and lectures...

Moral relativism attracts and repels. What is defensible in it and what is to be rejected? Do we as human beings have no shared standards by which we can understand one another? Can we abstain from judging one another's practices? Do we truly have divergent views about what constitutes good and evil, virtue and vice, harm and welfare, dignity and humiliation, or is there some underlying commonality that trumps it all?These questions turn up everywhere, from Montaigne's essay on can...