"In the sentence ‘She's no longer suffering,' to what, to whom does ‘she' refer? What does that present tense mean?" —Roland Barthes, from his diaryThe day after his mother's death in October 1977,...

In this short, highly readable book, the master of world-systems theory provides a succinct anatomy of capitalism over the past five hundred years. Considering the way capitalism has changed and...

Niccolò Machiavelli's Art of War is one of the world's great classics of military and political theory. Praised by the finest military minds in history and said to have influenced no lesser lights...

In recent years, bitter partisan disputes have erupted over Medicare reform. Democrats and Republicans have fiercely contested issues such as prescription drug coverage and how to finance Medicare to...

Symbolic resources affect social, cultural, and economic development. The value of being "Made in America" or "Made in Italy," for example, depends not only on the material advantages each place...

Why has power in the West assumed the form of an "economy," that is, of a government of men and things? If power is essentially government, why does it need glory, that is, the ceremonial and...

Friedrich Nietzsche is one of the most elusive thinkers in the philosophical tradition. His highly unusual style and insistence on what remains hidden or unsaid in his writing make pinning him to a...

The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, first published in 1944, is considered one of the most profound and relevant works by the influential theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, and certainly...

Life throws ethical questions at us every day, some momentous and difficult, some fairly trivial and easily worked out. To help the average person deal with such puzzling issues, the website...

A revolutionary history and theory of harmony from music to metaphysics An ancient tradition holds that Pythagoras invented harmony. It is said that one day, he wandered by a forge and, hearing a...

Following his timely and well-received A Failure of Capitalism, Richard Posner steps back to take a longer view of the continuing crisis of democratic capitalism as the American and world economies...

Jacques Derrida, the French philosopher, developed his critical technique known as 'deconstruction'. His work is associated with ideas surrounding both post-structuralism and post-modern philosophy,...

The global trend toward democratization of the last two decades has been accompanied by the resurgence of various politics of "identity/difference." From nationalist and ethnic revivals in the...

Focusing on the Western philosophical tradition and the work of contemporary feminists, Jean Elshtain explores the general tendency to assert the primacy of the public world—the political sphere...

A leading historian reveals the radical origins of humanity's most cherished secular valuesDemocracy, free thought and expression, religious tolerance, individual liberty, political...

Why supernatural beliefs are at odds with a true understanding of the afterlifeIn this extraordinary book, Mark Johnston sets out a new understanding of personal identity and the self, thereby...

The first philosophers paved the way for the work of Plato and Aristotle - and hence for the whole of Western thought. Aristotle said that philosophy begins with wonder, and the first Western...

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography, from the author of Humanly PossibleHow to get along with people, how to deal with violence, how to adjust to losing someone you...

From the nineteenth-century textile mills of Lowell, Massachusetts, to the triumph of unions in the twentieth century and their waning influence today, the contest between labor and capital for the...

It is considerably easier to say that modern philosophy began with Descartes than it is to define the modernity and philosophy to which Descartes gave rise. In Lines of Thought, Claudia Brodsky...