A critical analysis of African-American novelist and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston' 1934 essay Characteristics of Negro Expression: A crushing evaluation of the many racial prejudices of 1930s America, including a common presumption that African American art was unoriginal - merely poorly copying white culture.
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.
A critical analysis of Spivak's classic 1988 postcolonial studies essay, in which she argues that a core problem for the poorest and most marginalized in society (the subalterns) is that they have no platform to express their concerns and no voice to affect policy debates or demand a fairer share of society's goods.
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 the wheels of society.
A flagbearer for the increasingly fashionable genre of "e;transnational history,"e; Timothy Snyder's Bloodlands is, first and foremost, a stunning example of the critical thinking skill of evaluation.
No philosopher could be a better example of creative thinking in action than Friedrich Nietzsche: a German iconoclast who systematically attacked the traditionally accepted views of academic philosophers, seeking to tear down their rickety platform and replace it with a platform of his own.
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.
Thomas Robert Malthus' 1798 Essay on the Principle of Population helped change the direction of economics, politics, and the natural sciences with its reasoning and problem solving.
Leon Festinger's 1957 A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance is a key text in the history of psychology - one that made its author one of the most influential social psychologists of his time.
Peruvian priest Gustavo Gutierrez wanted to solve the problem of how the church could conduct itself to improve the lives of the poor, while consistently positioning itself as politically neutral.
Martin Luther King's policy of non-violent protest in the struggle for civil rights in the United States during the second half of the twentieth century led to fundamental shifts in American government policy relating to segregation, and a cultural shift in the treatment of African Americans.
Robert Lucas is known among economists as one of the most influential macroeconomists of recent times - a reputation founded in no small part on the critical thinking skills displayed in his seminal 1990 paper 'Why Doesn't Capital Flow from Rich to Poor Countries?
John Lewis Gaddis had written four previous books on the Cold War by the time he published We Now Know - so the main thrust of his new work was not so much to present new arguments as to re-examine old ones in the light of new evidence that began emerging from behind the Iron Curtain after 1990.
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.
John Locke's 1689 Two Treatises of Government is a key text in the history of political theory - one whose influence remains marked on modern politics, the American Constitution and beyond.
Kenneth Waltz's 1979 Theory of International Politics is credited with bringing about a "e;scientific revolution"e; in the study of international relations - bringing the field into a new era of systematic study.
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.
Frantz Fanon is one of the most important figures in the history of what is now known as postcolonial studies - the field that examines the meaning and impacts of European colonialism across the world.
Few works of history have succeeded so completely in forcing their readers to take a fresh look at the evidence as Christopher Hill's The World Turned Upside Down - and that achievement is rooted firmly in Hill's exceptional problem-solving skills.
Adam Smith's 1776 Inquiry into The Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations - more often known simply as The Wealth of Nations - is one of the most important books in modern intellectual history.
Eric Hoffer's The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements is one of the most widely read works of social psychology written in the 20th-century.
Soren Kierkegaard's The Sickness unto Death is widely recognized as one of the most significant and influential works of Christian philosophy written in the nineteenth century.
The essay for which The Sacred Wood is primarily remembered is one of the most famous pieces of criticism in English: "e;Tradition and the Individual Talent"e; helped to re-orientate arguments about the study of literature and its production by redefining the nature of tradition and the artist's relation to it.
Milton Friedman was one of the most influential economists of all time - and his ideas had a huge impact on the economic policies of governments across the world.
