Slavery had been accepted in Western culture for centuries. So why did a movement suddenly rise up in the industrial era calling for its abolition? Could it be that people had suddenly become more enlightened and humanitarian? Or were there other, more compelling and perhaps self-serving reasons for this sudden about-turn?¶Davis offers a thorough account of the emergence of the antislavery movement in Britain and the United States. But what makes his work unique is how it unpacks the compl...

Published anonymously by Locke in 1689, Two Treatises claims that a monarch’s right to rule does not come from God, but from the people he rules. ¶ In the mid-seventeenth century, England removed its king and tried different systems of government before opting to restore a monarchy. This turmoil prompted Locke to explore where a king’s power comes from. He decided that a sovereign is there to keep order in society, and people enter into a “contract” with him wherein he protects the people ...

In his 1994 collection of essays The Location of Culture, Bhabha investigates concepts such as ‘hybridity’ (ideas being informed by all the cultures with which they have contact) and ‘mimicry’ (adopting ideas from other cultures) to express a postcolonial world in which we are all ‘in between’ cultures. These concepts have been important to postcolonial studies but have also informed such diverse disciplines as architecture and literature. Controversially he insists that the written word w...

More than 2,500 years after it was written, Symposium remains a key text for philosophers, historians, writers, artists and politicians. ¶Plato imagines seven important historical figures, including the philosopher Socrates, debating eros (human love and desire). His works often use this “dramatic dialogue,” and many scholars consider Symposium to be the nest example of the technique. ¶From this vibrant contest of words, Plato presents key philosophical ideas about love, ethics, knowledge ...

Gutiérrez’s 1971 book provides an inspiring argument as to how Christians and the Roman Catholic Church should support the poor. The Catholic Church had traditionally seen itself as politically neutral but in the 1960s and 70s reformers, such as Gutiérrez, urged it to seriously address real-world issues such as poverty and oppression. He coined the term “liberation theology,” a practice combining reflection, critical Bible reading, and—importantly—action, to describe what should be done to...

Bloomsbury presents Dark Waters, Starry Skies by Jeffrey Cox, read by John Chancer.Esteemed Pacific War historian Jeffrey Cox has produced a fast-paced and absorbing read of the crucial New Georgia phase of the Guadalcanal-Solomons Campaign during the Pacific War.Thousands of miles from friendly ports, the US Navy had finally managed to complete the capture of Guadalcanal from the Japanese in early 1943. Now the Allies sought to keep the offensive momentum won at such a hig...

Though nearly 1500 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 and for believers, continues to offer guidance about incorporating meditation and prayer into devotions. Not long after Benedict devoted himself to a life of solitude and prayer, people began looking to him for guidance, and he helped found several monastic communities. After guiding...

For decades, the manufacturing industry has employed the Toyota Production System — the most powerful production method in the world — to reduce waste, improve quality, reduce defects and increase worker productivity. In 2001, Virginia Mason Medical Center, an integrated healthcare delivery system in Seattle, Washington set out to achieve its compelling vision to become The Quality Leader and to fulfill that vision, adopted the Toyota Production System as its management method.Tran...

When Manias, Panics, and Crashes was published (1978), the world was entering a new period of global economic turbulence. Economists based their analyses on the assumption that investors act rationally and often communicated their ideas with dry, technical language. Using a more literary, descriptive style, Kindleberger argued that markets are unstable precisely because investors act irrationally when they get swept along on a tide of optimism or despair making the financial markets suscep...

Published in 1992, The End of History and the Last Man argues that capitalist democracy is the final destination for all societies. Fukuyama believed democracy triumphed during the Cold War because it lacks the “fundamental contradictions” inherent in communism and satisfies our yearning for freedom and equality. Democracy therefore marks the endpoint in the evolution of ideology, and so the “end of history.” There will still be “events,” but no fundamental change in ideology.

Excited by the scientific breakthroughs of the day, David Hume set out to construct a science of the mind. 1748’s An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding is the result. ¶A work that had a huge influence on great thinkers, including Kant, An Enquiry is Hume’s examination of how we obtain information and form beliefs. He argues that we gain knowledge empirically, through our senses. But while these impressions are key to our beliefs about the world, Hume felt that we underestimate the impo...

An in-depth history of the US Navy’s light aircraft carrier the USS Princeton and its operational exploits in the Pacific Theater of World War II.This new history of the life and loss of USS Princeton tells the story of the new class of aircraft carrier that proved essential to the US Navy’s victory over the Imperial Japanese Navy in the Pacific War.USS Princeton (CVL-23) started life as the light cruiser Tallahassee befo...