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American author Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's 1996 work, Hitler's Willing Executioners, is one of the most controversial history books of modern times. While most historians have sought to explain the horror of the Holocaust by focusing on Nazi leaders and their ideologies, Goldhagen set out to investigate whether ordinary Germans enthusiastically embraced their goals. His conclusion: "eliminationist anti-Semitism" - a genocidal hatred of Jews unique to Germany - caused the Holocaust.

Austrian-born economist Friedrich Hayek's 1944 work, The Road to Serfdom, analyzes the ways in which excessive government planning can erode democracy. Published while World War II still raged, the work draws influential parallels between the totalitarianism of both socialism and Nazism and increasing control exerted by Western democracies.

While previous scholars of international history had focused on "great men" and their achievements, Paul Kennedy focused on the interdependent relationship between military might and economic growth. In his 1987 work, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, he shows why countries that balance the economic and the military can become "great powers." Those that fail to do so, however, risk imperial overstretch and failure.

De Beauvoir's book charted the oppression of "the second sex" in terms never before seen in the academic world. Her most startling theory became a rallying cry for the feminist movement: "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman." She argued that gender identity was shaped by upbringing in a world ruled by men. A leading light in the existentialist movement, de Beauvoir applied the radical philosophy of personal choice and freedom to argue that women were subjugated in every area of life.

Anthropologist Geert Hofstede's 1980 work, Culture's Consequences, was the first study to look at cultural differences using data. The Dutchman took advantage of the enormous global span of his employer, the technology company IBM, to gather survey data in 20 languages and across 70 countries, and to produce a unique study of national values.

Advertisements for soap. The image of a film star. The sight of a car as beautiful as a goddess. We accept all these common objects and experiences as normal parts of our lives and as timeless and universal as myth. But they are also carrying hidden messages that none of us even suspect, as Barthes demonstrates with a unique analysis of the signs that generate meanings and assumptions we all take for granted. These things have been "taken out of history" so that their hidden cultural meanings can be accepted without question.

Since it was first published in 1973, A Random Walk Down Wall Street has been a highly influential best seller. Burton G. Malkiel demolishes the idea that investment "experts" can predict stock price changes and thereby "beat the market." With all available information that could affect the value of a company's shares known almost instantly to all investors, Malkiel says, shares quickly find the price that reflects that information. This is known as the efficient market hypothesis.

When Charles P. Kindleberger's Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises was first published in 1978, the world was entering a new period of global economic turbulence. Established economists based their analyses on the assumption that investors act rationally, and these economists often communicated their ideas with dry, technical language. Kindleberger rebelled against convention. Using a more literary and descriptive style, he came up with a new view.

First published in Germany in 1980, British historian Ian Kershaw's The "Hitler Myth" is recognized as one of the most important books ever written about Adolf Hitler and the Nazi State. Kershaw wanted to focus on what he called the "history of everyday life", and so investigated the attitude of the German public to Hitler at the time, rather than looking at the dictator from the perspective of those in positions of power. He was intrigued to find out how someone like Hitler could have become such a powerful figure.

Ordinary Men is one of the most influential works on the Holocaust. Before US historian Browning's 1992 book, most Holocaust scholarship focused either on the experience of the victims or on the Nazi political ideology driving the slaughter. Browning investigates the stories of some who carried out acts of extreme violence, those who literally had blood on their hands. Who were they? What were their backgrounds? And how could they end up committing such unspeakable acts?

More than 200 years after Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations, governments around the world continue to address many of the issues discussed in the book. The most powerful states in the world are still committed to international trade, but questions are repeatedly asked about the role of governments in the economy and the effectiveness of the free market.

Reflections on the Revolution in France may read like an exercise in political theory. But when it was first published in 1790, Edmund Burke was fighting a real political battle. Burke saw that the Enlightenment ideas that had inspired radical political change in France the year before were beginning to take root in England. He wanted to discredit these dangerous thoughts before they sparked a revolution in his own country.

A work that had a huge influence on great thinkers including celebrated German philosopher Immanuel Kant, An Enquiry is Hume's examination of how we obtain information and form beliefs. He argues that we mainly gain knowledge through our senses, a theory known as empiricism. But while the impressions from our senses are key to our beliefs about the world, Hume argues that reason and facts play only a limited part.

Among the general public, Descartes is probably most famous for his pronouncement "I think, therefore I am." That statement first appeared in an earlier work, but he expands on it in Meditations as he considers the idea of the mind as a separate entity to the body - the "dualist" approach. Descartes also set out to dispel skepticism - the idea that one cannot truly know anything. Using his "methodological skepticism," he showed that by doubting everything, we can know some things beyond doubt.

What is the nature of our personal relationship with God? That's the core question of Fear and Trembling. If God asks us to do something we instinctively feel is unethical, must we obey and have faith that he knows best? Examining this question, Danish philosopher Kierkegaard considers the biblical story in which God commands Abraham to sacrifice his only son, Isaac. His unique reading of the story breaks new ground, focusing on our relationship with God at an individual level.

First available in 1689, John Locke's Two Treatises of Government is considered one of the most important works ever written on the foundations of government. Published anonymously, it argues against the popular idea at the time that monarchs have a God-given right to rule. Instead Locke proposes that sovereignty - supreme authority - ultimately resides with the people.

Having witnessed some negative effects of democratic revolutions in his native France, Tocqueville visited America in 1831 to see what a functioning republic looked like. His main concerns were that democracy could make people too dependent on the state and that minority voices might not be heard - a problem he termed "The Tyranny of the Majority." By examining America thoroughly, Tocqueville hoped to show how a democratic system could avoid these pitfalls.

In Philosophical Investigations, the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein presents a radical approach to problems in the philosophy of language and the philosophy of mind. In fact, he sets out a radically new conception of philosophy itself. Published in 1953, two years after Wittgenstein's death, many still consider it one of the finest works of 20th century philosophy.

The era after World War II saw America's urban planners treat the lives of city-dwellers with disdain. It spawned a philosophy of urban renewal that valued the efficient movement of cars more than it valued the lives of people, and that wiped out entire neighborhoods dismissed by bureaucrats as slums. Published in 1961, Jane Jacobs's The Death and Life of Great American Cities examines the shortsightedness and failure of this philosophy. The book turns away from strict statistical study and abstract planning theory in favor of observations.

Philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft's 1792 work A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is a key text in the development of what we now know as feminism. Written in the atmosphere created by the French Revolution, which made radical change seem possible, Wollstonecraft's work challenges the idea that society's oppression of women is entirely natural. While her male contemporaries happily argued for the fundamental freedoms of all men, few were interested in extending these revolutionary rights to women.