Social Science Theory

The Bolsheviks promised that they were building a new society, a workers’ paradise that would change the nature of mankind itself. What they ended up constructing was the largest prison the world had ever seen: a Union of Soviet Socialist Republics that spanned half the globe.

The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) was the first major text by Adam Smith who, seven years later, was to publish what was to become one of the major economic classics, The Wealth of Nations (1776). However, Smith regarded The Theory of Moral Sentiments as his most important work because in it he identified the profound human instinct to act not necessarily in self-interest but through, as he phrased it, a ‘mutual sympathy of sentiments’.

What are the grand dynamics that drive the accumulation and distribution of capital? Questions about the long-term evolution of inequality, the concentration of wealth, and the prospects for economic growth lie at the heart of political economy. But satisfactory answers have been hard to find for lack of adequate data and clear guiding theories.

The Communist Manifesto (1848), Marx and Engels' revolutionary summons to the working classes, is one of the most important and influential political theories ever formulated. After four years of collaboration the authors produced this incisive account of their idea of Communism, in which they envisage a society without classes, private property or a state. They argue that increasing exploitation of industrial workers will eventually lead to a revolution in which Capitalism is overthrown.

New York Times best-selling psychologist Dr. Meg Jay uses real stories from real lives to provide smart, compassionate, and constructive advice about the crucial (and difficult) years we cannot afford to miss.

If there is one belief that has united the left and the right, psychologists and philosophers, ancient thinkers and modern ones, it is the tacit assumption that humans are bad. It's a notion that drives newspaper headlines and guides the laws that shape our lives. From Machiavelli to Hobbes, Freud to Pinker, the roots of this belief have sunk deep into Western thought. Human beings, we're taught, are by nature selfish and governed primarily by self-interest.

Branko Milanovic presents a bold new account of the dynamics that drive inequality on a global scale. Drawing on vast data sets and cutting-edge research, he explains the benign and malign forces that make inequality rise and fall within and among nations. He also reveals who has been helped the most by globalization, who has been held back, and what policies might tilt the balance toward economic justice.

Why is it so much easier for the Democratic Party to win the national popular vote than to build and maintain a majority in Congress? Why can Democrats sweep statewide offices in places like Pennsylvania and Michigan yet fail to take control of the same states' legislatures? Many place exclusive blame on partisan gerrymandering and voter suppression. But as political scientist Jonathan A. Rodden demonstrates in Why Cities Lose, the left's electoral challenges have deeper roots in economic and political geography.

Virtually all human societies were once organized tribally, yet over time most developed new political institutions which included a central state that could keep the peace and uniform laws that applied to all citizens. Some went on to create governments that were accountable to their constituents. We take these institutions for granted, but they are absent or are unable to perform in many of today’s developing countries—with often disastrous consequences for the rest of the world.

On May 17, 1980, on the eve of Peru's presidential election, five masked men stormed a small town. They set election ballots ablaze and vanished, but not before planting a red hammer-and-sickle banner in the town square. The lone man arrested the next morning later swore allegiance to a group called Shining Path. Described by a US State Department cable as "cold-blooded and bestial", Shining Path orchestrated bombings, assassinations, and massacres across the cities, countryside, and jungles of Peru in a murderous campaign to seize power and impose a Communist government.

Tribalism is our most misunderstood buzzword. We’ve all heard pundits bemoan its rise, and it’s been blamed for everything from political polarization to workplace discrimination. But as acclaimed cultural psychologist and Columbia professor Michael Morris argues, our tribal instincts are humanity’s secret weapon. Ours is the only species that lives in tribes: groups glued together by their distinctive cultures that can grow to a scale far beyond clans and bands. Morris argues that our psychology is wired by evolution in three distinctive ways.

Racism and discrimination have choked economic opportunity for African Americans at nearly every turn. At several historic moments, the trajectory of racial inequality could have been altered dramatically. Perhaps no moment was more opportune than the early days of Reconstruction, when the US government temporarily implemented a major redistribution of land from former slaveholders to the newly emancipated enslaved.

As this book argues, every era since Marx's death has reinvented him to fit its needs. There is not one Marx forever and for all time. There are a thousand Marxes. As Thomas Nail contends, one of the most significant contributions of Marx's work is that it treats theory itself as a historical practice. Reading Marx is not just an interpretative activity, but a creative one. As our historical conditions change, so do the kinds of questions we pose and the kinds of answers we find in Marx's writing.

In this gripping narrative history, Seth G. Jones reveals the CIA's involvement in a landmark victory for democracy during the Cold War. In 1983, while Soviet- backed Polish prime minister Wojciech Jaruzelski worked to crush a budding opposition movement through martial law, the CIA launched a sophisticated intelligence campaign supporting dissident groups. With President Ronald Reagan's support, American funds bankrolled clandestine newspapers, broadcasting, and information warfare. This initiative, code-named QRHELPFUL, proved vital in establishing a free and democratic Poland.

In this magisterial book, Roy Jenkins' unparalleled command of the political history of Britain and his own high-level government experience combine in a narrative account of Churchill's astounding career that is unmatched in its shrewd insights, its unforgettable anecdotes, the clarity of its overarching themes, and the author's nuanced appreciation of his extraordinary subject.

Why do superheroes choose to be superheroes? Where does Spider-Man's altruism come from, and what does it mean? Why is there so much prejudice against the X-Men, and how could they have responded to it, other than the way they did? Why are super-villains so aggressive? The Psychology of Superheroes answers these questions in a wide range of essays on topics from Aquaman to Arkham Asylum - exploring the inner workings our heroes usually only share with their therapists.

Proud and talented, history now remembers this conflicted man solely through the lens of his last desperate act of treason. Yet the fall of Benedict Arnold remains one of the Revolutionary period's great puzzles. Why did a brilliant military commander, who repeatedly risked his life fighting the British, who was grievously injured in the line of duty, and fell into debt personally funding his own troops, ultimately became a traitor to the patriot cause?

It's tempting to think that we live in an unprecedentedly fertile age for conspiracy theories, with seemingly each churn of the news cycle bringing fresh manifestations of large-scale paranoia. But the sad fact is that these narratives of suspicion - and the delusional psychologies that fuel them - have been a constant presence in American life for nearly as long as there's been an America. In this sweeping book, Thomas Milan Konda traces the country's obsession with conspiratorial thought from the early days of the republic to our own anxious moment.

Tobacco is the quintessential American product. From Jamestown to the Marlboro Man, the plant occupied the heart of the nation's economy and expressed its enduring myths. But today smoking rates have declined and smokers are exiled from many public spaces. The story of tobacco's fortunes may seem straightforward: Science triumphed over our addictive habits and the cynical machinations of tobacco executives. Yet the reality is more complicated. Both the cigarette's popularity and its eventual decline reflect a parallel course of shifting political priorities.

Nearly everyone is familiar with holograms - three-dimensional images projected into space with the aid of a laser. Two of the world's most eminent thinkers believe that the universe itself may be a giant hologram, quite literally a kind of image or construct created, at least in part, by the human mind. University of London physicist David Bohm, one of the world's most respected quantum physicists, and Stanford neurophysiologist Karl Pribram, an architect of our modern understanding of the brain, have developed a remarkable new way of looking at the universe.