Thomas Robert Malthus’ 1798 Essay on the Principle of Population helped change the direction of economics, politics, and the natural sciences with its reasoning and problem solving.The central topic of the essay was the idea, extremely prevalent in the 18th and 19th centuries, that human society was in some way perfectible. According to many thinkers of the time, mankind was on a course of steady improvement with advances set to continuously improve society and life for al...

Friedman’s 1968 paper changed the course of economic theory, rejecting existing theory and outlined an effective alternate monetary policy designed to secure ‘high employment, stable prices and rapid growth.’ Friedman demonstrated that monetary policy plays a vital role in broader economic stability and argued that economists got their monetary policy wrong in the 1950s 60s by misunderstanding the relationship between inflation and unemployment. Previously, economists had believed that gov...

Milton Friedman was one of the most influential economists of all time – and his ideas had a huge impact on the economic policies of governments across the world.A key theorist of capitalism and its relationship to democratic freedoms, Friedman remains one of the most cited authorities in both academic economics and government economic policy. His work remains striking not just for its brilliant grasp of economic laws and realities, but also for its consistent application of high-l...

Published in 1938, The Black Jacobins tells the story of the only successful slave revolution in historyan uprising inspired by the ideals of the French Revolution. The long struggle of African slaves in the French colony of San Domingo led to the establishment of the Republic of Haiti in 1804. ¶James explores the relationship between the two upheavals in an early example of ‘history from below,’ telling the story from the point of view of ordinary Haitians rather than (as was typical at t...

Today we take it for granted that history is much more than the story of great men and the elites from which they spring. Other forms of history – the histories of gender, class, rebellion and nonconformity – add much-needed context and color to our understanding of the past. But this has not always been so. In CLR James’s The Black Jacobins, we have one of the earliest, and most defining, examples of how ‘history from below’ ought to be written.James's approach is based on his nee...

One of the most influential books on economics ever written, An Essay on the Principle of Population remains one of the most controversial, too. Arguing that unchecked population growth will eventually outstrip food availability and lead to famine and disease, this 1798 work inspired naturalists Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace to develop the theory of natural selection. But it has also sparked criticism. To save society, Malthus proposes reining in population growth by minimizing ...

Amartya Sen uses his 1999 work Development as Freedom to evaluate the processes and outcomes of economic development.Having come to the conclusion that development is best summed up as the expansion of freedom, Sen examines traditional definitions and understandings of the term. He says people tend to think of freedoms as economic (the freedom to enter into market exchanges) or political (the freedom to vote and be an active citizen), and tries to understand why the defini...

Debt is one of the great subjects of our day, and understanding the way that it not only fuels economic growth, but can also be used as a means of generating profit and exerting control, is central to grasping the way in which our society really works.David Graeber's contribution to this debate is to apply his anthropologists' training to the understanding of a phenomenon often considered purely from an economic point of view. In this respect, the book can be considered a fine exam...

"Crisp and illuminating . . . well worth reading."—Wall Street JournalThe publication of The Marketplace of Ideas has precipitated a lively debate about the future of the American university system: what makes it so hard for colleges to decide which subjects are required? Why are so many academics against the concept of interdisciplinary studies? From his position at the heart of academe, Harvard professor Louis Menand thinks he's found the answer...

Today, when it seems like everything has been privatized, when austerity is too often seen as an economic or political problem that can be solved through better policy, and when the idea of moral values has been commandeered by the right, how can we re-imagine the forces used as weapons against community, solidarity, ecology and life itself?In this stirring call to arms, Max Haiven argues that capitalism has colonized how we all imagine and express what is valuable. Looking at the ...

Many people of all ages today continue to be attracted to sociology and other social sciences because of their promise to contribute to better political, social, and moral understandings of themselves and their social worlds-and often because they hope it will help them to build a better society. In a world of new movements and deepening economic inequality following the Great Recession, this new edition is vital. It features dozens of new examples from the latest research, with an emphasi...

Heralding a push for higher education to adopt a more global perspective, the term "globalizing knowledge" is today a popular catchphrase among academics and their circles. The complications and consequences of this desire for greater worldliness, however, are rarely considered critically. In this groundbreaking cultural-political sociology of knowledge and change, Michael D. Kennedy rearticulates questions, approaches, and case studies to clarify intellectuals' and institutions' responsib...