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In 2009's Liquidated, anthropologist Karen Z. Ho takes the tools of ethnographic research, which are traditionally used to study distant societies, and instead uses them to dissect the culture of high finance on New York's famous Wall Street. Through close observation of the daily lives of the bankers working there, and the beliefs, rituals, and timeframes that define them, Ho uncovers a distinct culture in which she finds the ultimate causes of the financial crises of recent times.

London-born, Cambridge-trained historian Tony Judt explains how postwar European history reflects the drawn-out consequences of World War II - beginning with Nazi Germany's surrender in 1945 and ending with the collapse of the Soviet Union (1989-91). No historian before had written in such detail about recent European history, using those two events as bookends. Nor had anyone gone to such lengths to argue that Eastern and Western Europe - large nations and small - had a key characteristic in common.

A professor at Harvard Business School, Kotter spent years coaching organizations - large and small; successful, less successful, and nearly bankrupt - through their own change processes. Some worked; others didn't. Distilling wisdom from these experiences, Kotter identifies eight common mistakes managers make implementing change. He then uses them to propose an eight-stage model that he argues can lead to successful organizational transformation.

Seventeenth-century French writer René Descartes, one of the fathers of philosophy, imagined the mind and body as two separate entities that combine to form a human being. This concept came to be called "mind-body dualism." Ryle set about ridiculing Descartes's idea of, as he put it, a "ghost in the machine" stating that it was "entirely false, and false not in detail but in principle...not merely an assemblage of particular mistakes. It is one big mistake and a mistake of a special kind."

The title of Norwegian-born historian Odd Arne Westad's 2005 work - The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times - offers a window into his thesis. Between the end of World War II and the early 1990s, both the Soviet Union and the United States "intervened" (or "offered aid and support to") developing nations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. In Westad's view, these interventions were more important than events in Europe, where most studies of the Cold War focus.

World Order draws together Henry Kissinger's thinking on how we make sense of the world politically. Kissinger identifies four principal competing methods by which order has been and is still sought. Those four conceptions are European, Chinese, Islamic, and American. None of these has been accepted as dominant. Kissinger asks whether a new, universal world order can be developed today.

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.

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.

Social anthropologist Edward Evans-Pritchard wrote Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic Among the Azande after 20 months' fieldwork with the Azande people of the South Sudan. It became the founding text in the anthropology of witchcraft, and has been hailed as a classic. Although Witchcraft had little impact when it first appeared in 1937, its popularity grew after World War II. Alongside his subsequent work on the Nuer people, Witchcraft established Evans-Pritchard's reputation as an important anthropologist.

In his 1986 book War Without Mercy, American historian John Dower examines Japanese-American relations during World War II and investigates links between popular culture, stereotypes, and extreme violence. He argues that it was the concept of racism - used equally by both sides - that underpinned the military conflict and led to a particularly brutal war in the Pacific and East Asia.

Although it is nearly 1,500 years old, The Rule of St. Benedict remains one of the most influential texts in the Western monastic movement. It offers a unique insight into the early development of Christian monasticism as monks secluded themselves from the world to fulfil religious vows. For believers, it continues to offer guidance about incorporating meditation and prayer into devotions, the quiet times of reflection when the focus is on God, through prayer or Bible study.

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?

Distinguished British historian Geoffrey Parker spent 15 years writing this ambitious history of the tumultuous 17th century, when nations were in the grip of what was known as the General Crisis. First published in 2013, Global Crisis reveals that freak weather was a key reason why the people of the 1600s lurched between droughts, famines, and countless wars.

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.

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.

British-born American political activist Thomas Paine wrote Rights of Man in 1791 in response to Reflections on the Revolution in France, Edmund Burke's attack on the French Revolution. Burke was wary of tearing down old institutions of government. But Paine argued that revolution is acceptable - in fact, necessary - when government ignores the rights of its people. Not surprisingly, Rights of Man proved very popular in the newly liberated United States, selling over 100,000 copies.

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.

Published in 1980, Michael E. Porter's Competitive Strategy went against the accepted wisdom of the time that said firms should focus on expanding their market share. Porter claimed they should, in fact, analyze the five forces that mold the environment in which they compete: new entrants, substitute products, buyers, suppliers, and industry rivals. Then they could rationally choose one of three "generic strategies" - lowering cost, differentiating their product, or catering to a niche market.

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.

How do we know what knowledge is? In his 1963 article, "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?", American philosopher Edmund Gettier radically challenged the accepted definition of knowledge itself. Greek philosopher Plato, discussing knowledge well over 2,000 years ago, defined it as "justified true belief". But in two ingenious cases, Gettier demonstrates that somebody's justified belief can be true because of nothing more than luck.