Political Philosophy

Why is the Atlantic slowly filling with crude petroleum, threatening a millions-of-years-old ecological balance? Why did traders at prominent banks take high-risk gambles with the money entrusted to them by hundreds of thousands of clients around the world, expanding and leveraging their investments to the point that failure led to a global financial crisis that left millions of people jobless and hundreds of cities economically devastated?

How to Win an Election is an ancient Roman guide for campaigning that is as up-to-date as tomorrow's headlines. In 64 BC when idealist Marcus Cicero, Rome's greatest orator, ran for consul (the highest office in the Republic), his practical brother Quintus decided he needed some no-nonsense advice on running a successful campaign.

This audiobook argues for a society organized by voluntary cooperation under institutions of private property and exchange with little, ultimately no, government. It describes how the most fundamental functions of government might be replaced by private institutions, with services such as protecting individual rights and settling disputes provided by private firms in a competitive market.

"La República" es la más conocida e influyente obra de Platón, y es el compendio de las ideas que conforman su filosofía. Se trata de un diálogo entre Sócrates y otros personajes, como los discípulos o parientes del propio Sócrates. El tema central de la República es la reflexión sobre qué es la justicia y cómo se expresa en el hombre, lo que lleva a Platón a abordar la organización de la ciudad-estado ideal.

En El arte de la guerra, Sun Tzu hace análisis detallados y recomendaciones útiles sobre trece temas principales de la estrategia militar: la planeación, el reto, el ataque, el posicionamiento, la dirección, fuerzas y debilidades, las maniobras, la implementación de las tácticas, el avance, el terreno, las fases de una campaña, las armas y el uso de información.

Credited as the Father of Liberalism and revered for his ground-breaking theories, John Locke left behind a legacy which has radically shaped political and philosophical thought for over 300 years. His writings continue to inspire and educate people to this day, from founding our central ideas of consciousness and knowledge to creating a framework for society which greatly influenced America’s founding fathers.

Enjoy this InAudio unabridged presentation of The Art of War, a fresh new audiobook of the classic military philosophy book. Whether you’re looking to conquer your enemies or fight business battles, The Art of War is a time-tested and influential classic for gaining competitive advantage.

On Anarchism provides the reasoning behind Noam Chomsky's fearless lifelong questioning of the legitimacy of entrenched power. In these essays, Chomsky redeems one of the most maligned ideologies, anarchism, and places it at the foundation of his political thinking. Chomsky's anarchism is distinctly optimistic and egalitarian. Moreover, it is a living, evolving tradition that is situated in a historical lineage; Chomsky's anarchism emphasizes the power of collective, rather than individualist, action.

The Racial Contract puts classic Western social contract theory to extraordinary radical use. With a sweeping look at the European expansionism and racism of the last 500 years, Charles W. Mills demonstrates how this peculiar and unacknowledged "contract" has shaped a system of global European domination: how it brings into existence "whites" and "non-whites," full persons and sub-persons, how it influences white moral theory and moral psychology; and how this system is imposed.

The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind is a seminal work on crowd psychology by Gustave Le Bon (1841-1931), a French social psychologist. He observes that a crowd forms when an influential idea unites a number of individuals and prompts them to act towards a common goal. In a crowd, the conscious personality of the individual is submerged and dominated by the collective mind. Furthermore, every sentiment becomes contagious to a degree that individuals readily sacrifice their personal interest to the collective.

On the morning after the 2016 presidential election, Thomas Ricks awoke with a few questions on his mind: What kind of nation did we now have? Is it what was designed or intended by the nation's founders? Trying to get as close to the source as he could, Ricks decided to go back and read the philosophy and literature that shaped the founders' thinking, and the letters they wrote to each other debating these crucial works—among them the Iliad, Plutarch's Lives, and the works of Xenophon, Epicurus, Aristotle, Cato, and Cicero.

A best-selling journalist’s illuminating tour through the hidden legacies and modern realities of British empire that exposes how much of the present-day United Kingdom is actually rooted in its colonial past. Empireland boldly and lucidly makes the case that in order to understand America, we must first understand British imperialism. Empire—whether British or otherwise—informs nearly everything we do.

A Thousand Small Sanities is a manifesto rooted in the lives of people who invented and extended the liberal tradition. Taking us from Montaigne to Mill, and from Middlemarch to the civil rights movement, Adam Gopnik argues that liberalism is not a form of centrism, nor simply another word for free markets, nor merely a term denoting a set of rights. It is something far more ambitious: the search for radical change by humane measures. Gopnik shows us why liberalism is one of the great moral adventures in human history.

Hannah Arendt's insightful observations of the modern world, based on a profound knowledge of the past, constitute an impassioned contribution to political philosophy. In Between Past and Future, Arendt describes the perplexing crises modern society faces as a result of the loss of meaning of the traditional key words of politics: justice, reason, responsibility, virtue, and glory. Through a series of eight exercises, she shows how we can redistill the vital essence of these concepts and use them to regain a frame of reference for the future.

A dazzlingly original account of the life and thought of Adam Smith, the greatest economist of all time. In Adam Smith, political philosopher Jesse Norman dispels the myths and caricatures, and provides a far more complex portrait of the man. Offering a highly engaging account of Smith's life and times, Norman explores his work as a whole and traces his influence over two centuries to the present day. Finally, he shows how a proper understanding of Smith can help us address the problems of modern capitalism.

They were four exceptional soldiers, a new generation asked to save an army that had been hollowed out after Vietnam. They survived the military's brutal winnowing to reach its top echelon. They became the Army's most influential generals in the crucible of Iraq. Collectively, their lives tell the story of the Army over the last four decades and illuminate the path it must travel to protect the nation over the next century.

When Chelsea Manning was arrested in May 2010 for leaking massive amounts of classified Army and diplomatic documents to WikiLeaks, she was almost immediately profiled by the mainstream press as a troubled person. Insurgent Truth argues for seeing Manning's example differently: as an act of what the book terms "outsider truth-telling." Bringing Manning's truth-telling into conversation with democratic, feminist, and queer theory, the book argues that outsider truth-tellers such as Manning tell or enact unsettling truths from a position of social illegibility.

In this pathbreaking book, New York Times best-selling author Cass Sunstein asks us to rethink freedom. He reveals that freedom of choice isn't nearly enough. To be free, we must also be able to navigate life. Accessible and lively and drawing on perspectives from the humanities, religion, and the arts, as well as social science and the law, On Freedom explores a crucial dimension of the human condition that philosophers and economists have long missed - and reveals what it would take to make freedom real.

Every American benefits every day from the phenomenal productivity of the free market, so why do so many people feel guilty or skeptical about our business system? In this passionately argued, eye-opening book, talk-radio star and best-selling author Michael Medved provides detailed and devastating rebuttals to the most widely circulated smears against capitalism.

This is an ideal introduction to the ideas of a man whom many regard as the greatest thinker of our time. Here we encounter the stages in the development of his unique philosophy of consciousness, his key intellectual breakthroughs, his theory of history, and his diagnosis of the political ills of the modern age. The book provides a veritable catalog of the thinkers who created the intellectual foundation of the twentieth century.