50 Politics Classics

Your shortcut to the most important ideas on freedom, equality, and power

Tom Butler-Bowdon

• Publisher: Nicholas Brealey Publishing
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9781399800983
• eBook ISBN:
  9781399804370
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Political Philosophy

What if you didn't have to read the 50 most important books on Politics to know the most important ideas?This is the thinking person's guide to the big political texts from across the centuries, from the original pioneers to the contemporary. With insightful commentary for each of the 50 books, key quotes and biographical information on the authors and a guide to further reading, 50 Politics Classics gives a unique overview of the political writings that shaped history and are still shaping minds today. From Abraham Lincoln to Nelson Mandela, and from Aristotle to George Orwell, 50 Politics Classics distils the essence of the books, pamphlets, and speeches of the major leaders and great thinkers that drive real-world change. Spanning 2, 500 years, left and right, thinkers and doers, Tom Butler-Bowdon covers activists, war strategists, visionary leaders, economists, philosophers of freedom, feminists, conservatives and environmentalists, right up to contemporary leaders and thought leaders such as Barack Obama, Isobel Wilkerson and Michael Pillsbury. Whether you consider yourself to be conservative, liberal, socialist, or Marxist, this book gives you greater understanding of the key ideas that matter in our politically charged times.The revised edition will:
· include 5-6 new contemporary classics from White Fragility to Why Nations Fail and leaders and thought leaders such as Barack Obama, Isobel Wilkerson and Michael Pillsbury.
· have a revised introduction to reflect on the seismic political movements that have blown up since the last edition
· have some of the less relevant titles removed

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 Lord Acton Essays on Freedom and Power (1948)
• 2 Daron Acemoglu & James A. Robinson Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty (2012)
• 3 Saul Alinsky Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals (1971)
• 4 Graham T. Allison & Philip Zelikow Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (1971/1999)
• 5 Norman Angell The Great Illusion: A Study of the Relation of Military Power to National Advantage (1910)
• 6 Hannah Arendt The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951)
• 7 Aristotle Politics (4th century BCE)
• 8 Frédéric Bastiat The Law (1850)
• 9 Isaiah Berlin Two Concepts of Liberty (1958)
• 10 Edward Bernays Propaganda (1928)
• 11 Carl Bernstein & Bob Woodward All the President’s Men (1974)
• 12 Edmund Burke Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)
• 13 Rachel Carson Silent Spring (1962)
• 14 Winston Churchill The Gathering Storm (1948)
• 15 Carl von Clausewitz On War (1832)
• 16 Frantz Fanon The Wretched of the Earth (1961)
• 17 Francis Fukuyama The End of History and the Last Man (1992)
• 18 Mohandas K. Gandhi An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth (1927–29)
• 19 Emma Goldman Anarchism and Other Essays (1910)
• 20 Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, & James Madison The Federalist Papers (1788)
• 21 F.A. Hayek The Road to Serfdom (1944)
• 22 Thomas Hobbes Leviathan, or the Matter, Forme and Power of a Common Wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil (1651)
• 23 Samuel P. Huntington The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996)
• 24 Paul Kennedy The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (1987)
• 25 Martin Luther King Jr. (edited by Clayborne Carson) The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. (1998)
• 26 Abraham Lincoln The Gettysburg Address (1863)
• 27 John Locke Two Treatises of Government (1689)
• 28 Niccolò Machiavelli Discourses on Livy (1531)
• 29 Nelson Mandela Long Walk to Freedom (1995)
• 30 Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels The Communist Manifesto (1848)
• 31 Mencius The Mencius (3rd century BCE)
• 32 John Stuart Mill The Subjection of Women (1869)
• 33 Hans Morgenthau Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace (1948)
• 34 Robert Nozick Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974)
• 35 Barack Obama A Promised Land (2020)
• 36 Mancur Olson The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities (1982)
• 37 George Orwell Animal Farm (1945)
• 38 Thomas Paine Common Sense (1776)
• 39 Michael Pillsbury The Hundred-Year Marathon (2015)
• 40 Plato Crito (4th century BCE)
• 41 Karl Popper The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945)
• 42 Jean-Jacques Rousseau Discourse on the Origins and Basis of Inequality Among Men (1755)
• 43 Upton Sinclair The Jungle (1906)
• 44 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn The Gulag Archipelago, 1918–56 (1974)
• 45 Sun Yat-sen Three Principles of the People (1924)
• 46 Margaret Thatcher The Autobiography (2013)
• 47 Henry David Thoreau Civil Disobedience (1849)
• 48 Alexis de Tocqueville Democracy in America (1835)
• 49 Isabel Wilkerson Caste (2020)
• 50 Mary Wollstonecraft A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)
• 50 More Politics Classics
• Credits
• Acknowledgments