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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.

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.

Plato imagines a dinner party - a symposium - held in the Athens of the late fifth century BC. He invites seven important historical figures including the philosopher Socrates, the comic playwright Aristophanes, and the notorious military general Alcibiades. As entertainment, each guest gives a speech praising eros (human love or erotic desire). Plato then "collects" these seven speeches into Symposium.

Northern Irish academic, novelist, and broadcaster C. S. Lewis' 1943 philosophical work The Abolition of Man is subtitled Reflections on Education with Special Reference to the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of Schools. It is about the power of education to shape the minds of individuals and improve society (or harm it, if badly done), and encompasses everything from the scientific worldview at the time to philosophical arguments about right and wrong.

After World War II ended in 1945, the Soviet Union and the United States began a decades-long confrontation that would become known as the Cold War. American foreign policy focused on "containment" - preventing the communist USSR from gaining more ground - and many people looked at the geographical and political implications of this policy. Others, meanwhile, explored American domestic life in that same period. But historian Elaine Tyler May became the first person to bring these seemingly unrelated areas together.

Because the potential returns appear to be greater in poorer countries than in the developed world, modern economic theory implies that rich countries should continually invest in poor countries until returns balance out. In fact, this doesn't happen. Economist Robert E. Lucas Jr. asks why in his groundbreaking 1990 article, "Why Doesn't Capital Flow from Rich to Poor Countries?" The question has become known as the Lucas paradox. Lucas analyzes this, focusing especially on the role of human capital.

First published in 1996, Our Ecological Footprint sets out a powerful model for visualizing and measuring humanity's impact on the Earth - the ecological footprint - with the aim of reducing the harm we are causing the planet before it is too late. Although numerous organizations, governments, and individuals worldwide have now adopted the concept of ecological footprinting, the idea has also proved to be controversial.

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.

Reconstruction had the potential to make good on the promise of America's founders, bringing freedom and equality to all. Yet this promise was undermined by defiant Southern whites determined to protect their own privilege. Earlier interpretations of this period often blamed the failures of Reconstruction on black people. But Foner's analysis concluded that Reconstruction was an overall failure because whites prevented African Americans from becoming equal citizens.

Meditations is a remarkable work, a unique insight into the thinking of one of the most conscientious and able Roman emperors, Marcus Aurelius, who ruled at the apex of Roman might in the late second century CE. It was never intended to be widely circulated. Indeed, it was almost unknown until the 16th century. The work is like a series of jottings, written for its author's own improvement; it has no formal structure and its arguments follow no obvious pattern.

The emergence of China as a major player on the international stage is one of the most significant developments in contemporary geopolitics - the study of the effects of geography (both human and physical) on international relations. Kang's call for understanding of and engagement with China, rather than containment and confrontation, makes China Rising a "must-listen" for anyone interested in international politics.

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.

African American novelist, anthropologist, and essayist Zora Neale Hurston explains how expression in African American arts and culture in the early 20th century departed from the art of white America. Using material collected on anthropological expeditions to the South, Hurston describes a creative process that is alive, ever changing, and largely improvisational. At the time African American art was often criticized for being unoriginal and for copying white culture.

Do people always act rationally and in their own best interests? US economist Richard Thaler and legal scholar Cass Sunstein did not believe so, and were convinced that psychological factors often stopped people from making the best decisions. Their 2008 work Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness argues that governments should "nudge" citizens to make better choices in all sorts of areas, from eating habits, to health, to financial planning.

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.

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.

David Hume's book tackling the subject of belief in God is among the most influential in Western philosophy. Published in 1779, three years after Hume's death, without featuring the author's name, the book was deeply controversial in its day. It is now considered a masterpiece and Hume is regarded as one of the greatest philosophers writing in English.

Examining 1,200 years of history from the foundation of Charlemagne's Holy Roman Empire to the beheading of King Charles I in England is in itself a mammoth undertaking. But it is the issues explored by German American historian Ernst H. Kantorowicz in his 1957 study The King's Two Bodies that have had a profound effect on the way academics think about the study of history.

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.