Bøker i The Macat Library-serien

In this 1920 collection of early critical essays, Eliot proposes rules for how a poet should relate to a poem and to the poetic tradition. Arguing against the Romantic tradition of self-expression, Eliot proposes instead that poetry should express universal values and emotions.

Lovelock wrote Gaia for the general public, not for scientists. But there is a lot of science in this 1979 work. Lovelock suggests that the Earth is a superorganism, made up of all living things, interacting with the air, the oceans, and the surface rocks of the planet.

Sheila Fitzpatrick's Everyday Stalinism rejects the simplistic treatment of the Soviet Union as a totalitarian government that tightly controlled its citizens.

Geoffrey Parker spent 15 years writing this ambitious history of the tumultuous 17th century, a period in the grip of what historians term the General Crisis (2013).

With the ending of World War II in 1945, the Soviet Union and the United States began the decades-long confrontation 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.

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.

Dikotter's 2010 masterpiece catalogues the tragedy and the cover-up of the hideous famine caused by the Great Leap Forward-Mao Zedong's disastrous attempt to jumpstart industrialization in China in the late 1950s.

Liquidated uses ethnographic research, traditionally used to study distant societies, to dissect the culture of high finance on New York's famous Wall Street.

Do people always act rationally and in their own best interests? Thaler and Sunstein do not believe so. They are convinced that psychological factors often stop people from making the best decisions.

Tony Judt was born in London in 1948, but spent most of his career in America. He studied history at Cambridge and then earned his doctorate in France. His first major writings were about France's historical left-wing movements, particularly the French Socialist Party.

Our Ecological Footprint presents a powerful model for measuring humanity's impact on the Earth to reduce the harm we are causing the planet before it's too late.

Written around 397, Confessions is one of the most referenced works in the Western literary tradition. The initial nine of 13 books draw a compelling narrative of the first 43 years of Augustine's life. The tenth book uses these experiences as a meditation on the nature of memory, and the final three contemplate the Bible's Book of Genesis.

A game-changer when it was first published in 1961, Who Governs? remains one of the most influential political science books ever written. Dahl argues that American liberal democracy is a pluralist system in which policy is not, as is so often thought, shaped by a small group of powerful individuals.

Hamid Dabashi suggests that the Iranian Revolution of 1978-9 would not have taken place had it not been for the influential ideas set out by eight Iranian Islamic thinkers in the decades before it occurred.

Advertisements for soap. The image of a film star. We accept these common objects as a normal part of our life. But each also carries hidden messages that none of us even suspect - as Barthes demonstrated in his unique analysis of the signs that generate meanings and assumptions we all take for granted.

Advertisements for soap. The image of a lm star. We accept these common objects as a normal part of our life. But each also carries hidden messages that none of us even suspect - as Barthes demonstrated in his unique analysis of the signs that generate meanings and assumptions we all take for granted.

Aristotle, a student of Plato, wrote Nicomachean Ethics in 350 BCE, in a time of extraordinary intellectual development. Over two millennia later, his thorough exploration of virtue, reason, and the ultimate human good still forms the basis of the values at the heart of Western civilization.

"In his highly influential 1996 book, Huntington offers a vision of a post-Cold War world in which conflict takes place not between competing ideologies but between cultures.

Classical economics suggests that market economies are self-correcting in times of recession or depression, and tend toward full employment and output. But English economist John Maynard Keynes disagrees. In his ground-breaking 1936 study The General Theory, Keynes argues that traditional economics has misunderstood the causes of unemployment.

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.

The History of the Peloponnesian War is acknowledged as the first great work in the fields of history and political theory. It uses narrative, debate, and analysis to document the war between Athens and Sparta (431-404 BCE). But its importance lies less in the story than in the way Thucydides tells it.

First published in 1790, Burke's Reflections rejects the ideas that had inspired radical political change in France and were beginning to take root in England. In an extended "letter to a friend," Burke uses a fiery rhetorical style to discredit what he saw as dangerous ideological developments before they sparked a revolution in his own country.

Turner's much-anthologized 1893 essay argues that the vast western frontier shaped the modern American character-and the course of US history. Interacting with both the wilderness and Native Americans, settlers on the frontier developed institutions and character traits quite distinct from Europe.

What is justice? How should an individual and a society behave justly? And how do they learn how to do so? These are just some of the core questions explored in The Republic, considered by many to be Plato's most important work.

In his ground-breaking 1936 study The General Theory, Keynes argues that traditional economics has misunderstood the causes of unemployment. Employment is not determined by the price of labor; it is directly linked to demand. Keynes believes market economies are by nature unstable, and so require government intervention.

More than a classic work on the history and philosophy of science, Kuhn's 1962 book is considered by many to be one of the greatest works of the 20th century. Kuhn helped change the way everyone looks at science.

Rawls' 1971 text links the idea of social justice to a basic sense of fairness that recognizes human rights and freedoms. Controversially, though, it also accepts differences in the distribution of goods and services-as long as they benefit the worst-off in society.

Why do we attempt to justify decisions that are clearly irrational? The answer lies in "cognitive dissonance," the feeling of mental discomfort we experience when we hold two contradictory beliefs at the same time.

As recently as the 1920s, the lack of great female writers was often considered evidence of women's inferiority. Virginia Woolf disagreed. Her 1929 essay argues that creativity is impossible without privacy and freedom from financial worries, and throughout history, women have had neither therefore, no tradition of great female writing existed.

Originally published in 1861, Mill's great work systematically details and defends the doctrine of utilitarianism. Arguing first that a "morally good" action is one that increases the general sum of happiness in the world, Mill then says that general principles of justice should be based on this idea.