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What is the nature of our personal relationship with God? That's the core question of Fear and Trembling. If God asks us to do something we instinctively feel is unethical, must we obey and have faith that he knows best? Examining this question, Danish philosopher Kierkegaard considers the biblical story in which God commands Abraham to sacrifice his only son, Isaac. His unique reading of the story breaks new ground, focusing on our relationship with God at an individual level.

First published in 1973, Albert Bandura's Aggression: A Social Learning Analysis is a groundbreaking work that helped lay the foundations of the discipline of social psychology. Much of what we now know about the influences of the early childhood environment on delinquency and anti-social behavior can be traced back to Bandura's work. In the book, he uses the subject of aggression to demonstrate and explore the usefulness of what is called social learning theory.

On the Genealogy of Morality was written in 1887 when Friedrich Nietzsche was at the height of his powers as a philosopher and master of German prose writing. Here, he criticizes the idea that there is just one conception of moral goodness, dissecting the contemporary practice of morality and looking at it from a historical viewpoint. Rather than following a metaphysical or religious approach, Nietzsche adopts a naturalistic framework, which is grounded in history and natural science, to understand our concepts of good and evil in the Christianized Western world.

Ordinary Men is one of the most influential works on the Holocaust. Before US historian Browning's 1992 book, most Holocaust scholarship focused either on the experience of the victims or on the Nazi political ideology driving the slaughter. Browning investigates the stories of some who carried out acts of extreme violence, those who literally had blood on their hands. Who were they? What were their backgrounds? And how could they end up committing such unspeakable acts?

Democracy and Its Critics is a modern classic that integrates Robert A. Dahl's democratic thinking as it developed over the course of his academic career. It makes an important contribution to theories about democracy and remains widely cited and debated. Dahl offers an interpretation of democratic theory and practice that is relevant to the modern world and that pays special attention to the problems highlighted by people who criticize democracy.

De Beauvoir's book charted the oppression of "the second sex" in terms never before seen in the academic world. Her most startling theory became a rallying cry for the feminist movement: "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman." She argued that gender identity was shaped by upbringing in a world ruled by men. A leading light in the existentialist movement, de Beauvoir applied the radical philosophy of personal choice and freedom to argue that women were subjugated in every area of life.

In 1999's Everyday Stalinism, historian Sheila Fitzpatrick rejects the common practice of simplistically treating the Soviet Union as a totalitarian government that tightly controlled its citizens. She takes advantage of vast archives that were released after the Cold War to examine Soviet society "from below" - looking at how ordinary citizens coped with shortages and the general sense of fear created by the state.

Michel Foucault had already written extensively about medicine, madness, and prisons. But in the latter days of his career, he turned to the subject of sexuality, planning six volumes on the subject. He completed three before dying of an AIDS-related illness in 1984. Foucault's History of Sexuality Vol. 1 is a study of the evolution of cultural ideas about sex in the West since the end of the 17th century. Volume two looked at attitudes toward sex in ancient Greece; volume three investigated sex in ancient Rome.

Politics is one of the first books ever to investigate the concept of political philosophy. Written by the famous Greek thinker Aristotle in the fourth century BCE, it focuses on trying to understand how best to create political communities that support, serve, and improve their citizens. Aristotle investigates a number of different areas before drawing conclusions. These include an examination of existing regimes to see which are best, a look at political theories, and even an exploration of the systems of education.

Its arguments would go on to shape global economics and influence world leaders in the late 20th century, but Capitalism and Freedom was largely ignored when it was first published in 1962. The first work written for the general public by American economist Milton Friedman, the book argues that a free market with little government interference is the best way to run society.

First available in 1689, John Locke's Two Treatises of Government is considered one of the most important works ever written on the foundations of government. Published anonymously, it argues against the popular idea at the time that monarchs have a God-given right to rule. Instead Locke proposes that sovereignty - supreme authority - ultimately resides with the people.

An extraordinarily ambitious work, Republic has made important contributions to many branches of modern philosophy. The work unfolds as a series of conversations in which participants set out a number of different theories of justice, and then imagine how these theories might become reality within the political structure of a city. In examining justice, Plato investigates an enormous range of questions in the areas of ethics, politics, and even the nature of existence itself.

In her original and controversial 2005 book Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject Saba Mahmood examines the women's mosque movement in Cairo, Egypt as part of a wider turn to religious fervor integral to the broader Islamic revival of the twenty-first century. Mahmood's research suggests that in choosing to embrace the norms of their faith, these pious Muslim women are not limiting, but rather affirming, themselves.

British-born American political activist Thomas Paine wrote Rights of Man in 1791 in response to Reflections on the Revolution in France, Edmund Burke's attack on the French Revolution. Burke was wary of tearing down old institutions of government. But Paine argued that revolution is acceptable - in fact, necessary - when government ignores the rights of its people. Not surprisingly, Rights of Man proved very popular in the newly liberated United States, selling over 100,000 copies.

In his 1997 work Guns, Germs, and Steel, American geography professor and environmental historian Jared Diamond looks to answer the question of why human history unfolded differently on different continents, and why power and wealth became distributed as they are.

William worked on The Principles of Psychology throughout the 1880s, while teaching psychology and philosophy at Harvard University. He drew together various styles of science to create a unified whole, and to establish psychology as a valid discipline. Not only did he achieve this, but he also created concepts - such as thought being a "stream of consciousness" - that have found their way into both the arts, and popular conversation.

Neurologist Oliver Sacks' 1985 book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat challenges the impersonal approach doctors took to patient care and paved the way for a new literary genre: popular science. At the time of its publication, neurologists and physicians relied mainly on clinical studies and their own expertise to set the course of treatment. Sacks found this inhumane and developed a very different approach, clearly demonstrated in The Man Who Mistook His Wife.

The modern world has been marked by a series of immense social revolutions that have transformed the states where they happened. In 1979, American sociologist Theda Skocpol published States and Social Revolutions and examined three of these uprisings: in France at the end of the 18th century, then in Russia and in China in the first half of the 20th century. She pinpointed a number of common factors that affected each of these countries at the time revolution happened.

In his 2005 book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (also subtitled How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive), author and multifaceted US scholar Jared M. Diamond clearly identifies five major factors that he says determine the success or failure of all human societies in all periods of history. Having first asked why societies collapse, Diamond explores various examples of failed societies, from the Norsemen of Scandinavia, who colonized Greenland in the early 10th century, to the 18th-century inhabitants of Easter Island.

Although it is nearly 1,500 years old, The Rule of St. Benedict remains one of the most influential texts in the Western monastic movement. It offers a unique insight into the early development of Christian monasticism as monks secluded themselves from the world to fulfil religious vows. For believers, it continues to offer guidance about incorporating meditation and prayer into devotions, the quiet times of reflection when the focus is on God, through prayer or Bible study.