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What might society look like if we were brave enough to emerge fully from the shadow of the Christian God? The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche explores this intriguing question in his 1886 work, Beyond Good and Evil. Going further, Nietzsche then asks of his "philosophers of the future" that they take on the challenge of supplying humanity with new ideals to live by.

What is history? In his 2001 book In Defence of History, British historian Richard J. Evans debates the very nature of the subject. Certain thinkers known as postmodernists consider history to be not very far removed from a work of fiction, something based on a scholar's own interpretation of the past. Evans, however, argues that historians do not have free reign. Rather, they are constrained and enabled by the nature of the surviving evidence.

In the century before the Black Death swept across the developed world, economic relations flourished between Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Before European Hegemony looks at this period. Without any dominant power, the world's economy revolved around eight interlocking sub-systems, with the major world cities and towns playing a crucial role in the system as a whole. But as economic activity spread across borders, so did the Black Death.

Before Bernard Bailyn published The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution in 1967, it was generally believed that the Revolution was driven both by social conflict between colonial settlers and the ruling British government, and by differences between classes in American society. Bailyn had a different view. He said that it was radical ideas that fired the American Revolution, and that the Revolution was above all else an ideological, constitutional, and political struggle.

Competitors have always existed in business, but what if it were possible to render your competition irrelevant? This is the critical question posed in W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne's book Blue Ocean Strategy. According to Kim and Mauborgne, the path to success of any company does not lie in taking on potential competitors but in the creation of "blue oceans" in uncontested market space. The authors offer analytical frameworks and tools to help businesses identify and capitalize on these new opportunities.

In her 1958 article "Modern Moral Philosophy", British philosopher Elizabeth (G. E. M.) Anscombe does nothing less than challenge the very foundations of moral philosophy, the discipline that tries to understand right and wrong action. The article sets out three main ideas. First, that moral philosophy should not be explored until a philosophy of psychology is already in place. Second, that philosophers who do not believe in God should not use ideas about "obligation" and "duty".

Born in 1858, Franz Boas permanently changed the standards and practices of anthropology. A German-born secular Jew, he became known for his distinctive approach to the discipline - non-hierarchical, open to diverse inputs, and unbiased. Throughout his career, Boas used his scholarship to effect social change. His work convinced his colleagues to abandon the theories that had decided one race (Caucasian) and one culture (Western European) were more fully developed and worthier than others.

In his 1936 book The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, Keynes argued that traditional economics has misunderstood the causes of unemployment. Employment is not determined by the price of labor; it is directly linked to demand in the economy. Keynes believed market economies are by nature unstable and so require government intervention. Spurred on by the social catastrophe of the Great Depression of the 1930s, Keynes set out to change the way the world thinks about economics.

Arguing first that what might be termed a morally good action is one that increases the general sum of happiness in the world, Mill then says that general principles of justice should be based on this idea. Therefore, in life, there is no conflict between what is just and what is morally right. Mill published Utilitarianism toward the end of a lifetime spent as a moral philosopher, political activist, and social reformer.

English historian Christopher Hill turned thinking about the English Civil Wars (1642-51) on its head when he published The World Turned Upside Down in 1972. Instead of focusing on power struggles in the upper echelons of English society - on the battle between the monarchy and would-be republicans - Hill looked to develop "history from below", investigating the lives of ordinary people, the way they saw society, and their political hopes for the future.

C. S. Lewis may be most famous for his fiction, including children's books like the Chronicles of Narnia series. But in his 1952 book Mere Christianity - originally printed as three separate pamphlets in 1942, 1943, and 1944 - this eclectic and learned man documents his complex journey from atheism to faith.

American sociologist and priest Jay MacLeod's 1987 work Ain't No Makin' It is groundbreaking for the novel way it combines field research with theory. The book follows the lives of two groups of young men from a low-income housing project in the greater Boston area. In it, MacLeod shows how poor people who aspire to live the American dream face many more obstacles than their middle-class counterparts.

An extraordinarily ambitious work, Republic has made important contributions to many branches of modern philosophy. The work unfolds as a series of conversations in which participants set out a number of different theories of justice, and then imagine how these theories might become reality within the political structure of a city. In examining justice, Plato investigates an enormous range of questions in the areas of ethics, politics, and even the nature of existence itself.

On the Genealogy of Morality was written in 1887 when Friedrich Nietzsche was at the height of his powers as a philosopher and master of German prose writing. Here, he criticizes the idea that there is just one conception of moral goodness, dissecting the contemporary practice of morality and looking at it from a historical viewpoint. Rather than following a metaphysical or religious approach, Nietzsche adopts a naturalistic framework, which is grounded in history and natural science, to understand our concepts of good and evil in the Christianized Western world.

Do we need the rules of religion in order to be good people? The German philosopher Immanuel Kant tackles this question in his 1793 text Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason. More than 200 years later, it is still a key text in the shaping of Western religious thought, as well as Kant's most direct discussion of religious themes. Kant tries to look at religious practices in relation to the Enlightenment movement and its firmly held beliefs in the power of reason and personal liberty.

In his 1807 work Phenomenology of Spirit, G. W. F. Hegel introduced the world to his philosophical system. His most influential work - and the culmination of the German Idealist movement begun in the late 18th century as a response to the works of Immanuel Kant - the book remains one of the undisputed classics of Western thought.

Originally written as 13 individual books around 397 CE, Augustine of Hippo's Confessions is one of the most referenced works in the Western literary tradition. Augustine lived from 354-430 CE, and the work is in part an autobiography. But it also tells us much about the period in which he lived. The first nine books draw a compelling narrative of the first 43 years of Augustine's life, which were spent in North Africa and Italy. In the 10th book, Augustine uses these experiences as a meditation on the nature of memory.

Elizabeth Loftus's 1979 work, Eyewitness Testimony, explains why people sometimes remember events inaccurately, and how this simple fact has a profound impact on the criminal justice system. Eyewitness accounts, which are often used in criminal trials, can be very persuasive to both judges and juries. Yet these accounts are based on memories that are not always reliable, meaning that suspects may be misidentified or wrongfully convicted.

In 1999's Everyday Stalinism, historian Sheila Fitzpatrick rejects the common practice of simplistically treating the Soviet Union as a totalitarian government that tightly controlled its citizens. She takes advantage of vast archives that were released after the Cold War to examine Soviet society "from below" - looking at how ordinary citizens coped with shortages and the general sense of fear created by the state.

Note: This is a summary and analysis of the book and not the original book. With 1962's Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life, Philippe Ariès didn't just produce the first history of childhood. He also helped popularize the idea that history should focus on ordinary people. Studying the demographic and cultural evolution of modern society was his life's work, and this book was his most significant contribution.