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An Analysis of Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth

An Analysis of Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth

Frantz Fanon is one of the most important figures in the history of what is now known as postcolonial studies – the field that examines the meaning and impacts of European colonialism across the world. Born in the French colony of Martinique Fanon worked as a psychiatrist in Algeria another French colony that saw brutal violence during its revolution against French rule. His experiences power the searing indictment of colonialism that is his final book 1961’s The Wretched of the Earth. Fanon’s account of the physical and psychological violence of colonialism forms the basis of a passionate closely reasoned call to arms – a call for violent revolution. Incendiary even today it was more so in its time; the book first being published during the brutal conflict caused by the Algerian Revolution. Viewed as a profoundly dangerous work by the colonial powers of the world Fanon’s book helped to inspire liberation struggles across the globe. Though it has flaws The Wretched of the Earth is above all a testament to the power of passionately sustained and closely reasoned argument: Fanon’s presentation of his evidence combines with his passion to produce an argument that it is almost impossible not to be swayed by. | An Analysis of Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth

GBP 6.50
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An Analysis of Richard Dawkins's The Selfish Gene

An Analysis of Richard Dawkins's The Selfish Gene

Richard Dawkins provides excellent examples of his reasoning and interpretation skills in The Selfish Gene. His 1976 book is not a work of original research but instead a careful explanation of evolution combined with an argument for a particular interpretation of several aspects of evolution. Since Dawkins is building on other researchers’ work and writing for a general audience the central elements of good reasoning are vital to his book: producing a clear argument and presenting a persuasive case; organising an argument and supporting its conclusions. In doing this Dawkins also employs the crucial skill of interpretation: understanding what evidence means; clarifying terms; questioning definitions; giving clear definitions on which to build arguments. The strength of his reasoning and interpretative skills played a key part in the widespread acceptance of his argument for a gene-centred interpretation of natural selection and evolution – and in its history as a bestselling classic of science writing. | An Analysis of Richard Dawkins's The Selfish Gene

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An Analysis of Thomas Paine's Common Sense

An Analysis of Thomas Paine's Common Sense

Thomas Paine’s 1776 Common Sense has secured an unshakeable place as one of history’s most explosive and revolutionary books. A slim pamphlet published at the beginning of the American Revolution it was so widely read that it remains the all-time best selling book in US history. An impassioned argument for American independence and for democratic government Common Sense can claim to have helped change the face of the world more than almost any other book. But Paine’s pamphlet is also a masterclass in critical thinking demonstrating how the reasoned construction of arguments can be reinforced by literary skill and passion. Paine is perhaps more famous as a stylist than as a constructor of arguments but Common Sense marries the best elements of good reasoning to its polemic. Moving systematically from the origins of government through a criticism of monarchy and on to the possibilities for future democratic government in an independent America Paine neatly lays out a series of persuasive reasons to fight for independence and a new form of government. Indeed as the pamphlet’s title suggested to do so was nothing more than ‘common sense. ’ | An Analysis of Thomas Paine's Common Sense

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An Analysis of Soren Kierkegaard's The Sickness Unto Death

An Analysis of Soren Kierkegaard's The Sickness Unto Death

Søren Kierkegaard’s The Sickness unto Death is widely recognized as one of the most significant and influential works of Christian philosophy written in the nineteenth century. One of the cornerstones of Kierkegaard’s reputation as a writer and thinker the book is also a masterclass in the art of interpretation. In critical thinking interpretation is all about defining and clarifying terms – making sure that everyone is on the same page. But it can also be about redefining terms: showing old concepts in a new light by interpreting them in a certain way. This skill is at the heart of The Sickness unto Death. Kierkegaard’s book focuses on the meaning of “despair” – the sickness named in the title. For Kierkegaard the key problem of existence was an individual’s relationship with God and he defines true despair as equating to the idea of sin – something that separates people from God or from the idea of a higher standard beyond ourselves. Kierkegaard’s interpretative journey into the ideas of despair sin and death is a Christian exploration of the place of the individual in the world. But its interpretative skills inspired generations of philosophers of all stripes – including notorious atheists like Jean-Paul Sartre. | An Analysis of Soren Kierkegaard's The Sickness Unto Death

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An Analysis of Kenneth Waltz's Theory of International Politics

An Analysis of Kenneth Waltz's Theory of International Politics

Kenneth Waltz’s 1979 Theory of International Politics is credited with bringing about a “scientific revolution” in the study of international relations – bringing the field into a new era of systematic study. The book is also a lesson in reasoning carefully and critically. Good reasoning is exemplified by arguments that move systematically through carefully organised stages taking into account opposing stances and ideas as they move towards a logical conclusion. Theory of International Politics might be a textbook example of how to go about structuring an argument in this way to produce a watertight case for a particular point of view. Waltz’s book begins by testing and critiquing earlier theories of international relations showing their strengths and weaknesses before moving on to argue for his own stance – what has since become known as “neorealism”. His aim was “to construct a theory of international politics that remedies the defects of present theories. ” And this is precisely what he did; by showing the shortcomings of the prevalent theories of international relations Waltz was then able to import insights from sociology to create a more comprehensive and realistic theory that took full account of the strengths of old schemas while also remedying their weaknesses – reasoning out a new theory in the process. | An Analysis of Kenneth Waltz's Theory of International Politics

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An Analysis of Eugene Genovese's Roll Jordan Roll The World the Slaves Made

An Analysis of Eugene Genovese's Roll Jordan Roll The World the Slaves Made

Most studies of slavery are underpinned by ideology and idealism. Eugene Genovese's ground-breaking book takes a stand against both these influences arguing not only that all ideological history is bad history – a remarkable statement coming from a self-professed Marxist – but also that slavery itself can only be understood if master and slave are studied together rather than separately. Genovese's most important insight which makes this book a fine example of the critical thinking skill of problem-solving is that the best way to view the institution of American slavery is to understand why exactly it was structured as it was. He saw slavery as a process of continual renegotiation of power balances as masters strove to extract the maximum work from their slaves while slaves aimed to obtain acknowledgement of their humanity and the ability to shape elements of the world that they were forced to live in. Genovese's thesis is not wholly original; he adapts Gramsci's notion of hegemony to re-interpret the master-slave relationship – but it is an important example of the benefits of asking productive new questions about topics that seem superficially at least to be entirely obvious. By focusing on slave culture rather than producing another study of economic determinism this massive study succeeds in reconceptualising an institution in an exciting new way. | An Analysis of Eugene Genovese's Roll Jordan Roll The World the Slaves Made

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An Analysis of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's Epistemology of the Closet

An Analysis of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's Epistemology of the Closet

In this book Sedgwick examines texts from Europe and America such as Wilde Nietzsche and Proust and considers the historical moment when sexual orientation came to be as important a signifier of personhood as gender had been for centuries. In doing this Sedgwick provides a history of sexuality that contends that the dualistic homo/heterosexual model is as much a basis for modern culture as it is an outcome of it. Thus Sedgwick laid the foundations of Queer Theory contributing to the contemporary debates regarding the relationship between desire and normative structures of power the question of empirical sexuality and the intricacies of the relationship between sexuality and gender. | An Analysis of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's Epistemology of the Closet

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An Analysis of Michael E. Porter's Competitive Strategy Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors

An Analysis of Michael E. Porter's Competitive Strategy Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors

Michael E. Porter’s 1980 book Competitive Strategy is a fine example of critical thinking skills in action. Porter used his strong evaluative skills to overturn much of the accepted wisdom in the world of business. By exploring the strengths and weaknesses of the accepted argument that the best policy for firms to become more successful was to focus on expanding their market share he was able to establish that the credibility of the argument was flawed. Porter did not believe such growth was the only way for a company to be successful and provided compelling arguments as to why this was not the case. His book shows how industries can be fragmented with different firms serving different parts of the market (the low-price mass market and the expensive high-end market in clothing for example) and examines strategies that businesses can follow in emerging mature and declining markets. If printing is in decline for example there may still be a market in this industry for high-end goods and services such as luxury craft bookbinding. Porter also made excellent use of the critical thinking skill of analysis in writing Competitive Strategy. His advice that executives should analyze the five forces that mold the environment in which they compete – new entrants substitute products buyers suppliers and industry rivals – focused heavily on defining the relationships between these disparate factors and urged readers to check the assumptions of their arguments. Porter avoided technical jargon and wrote in a straightforward way to help readers see that his evaluation of the problem was strong. Competitive Strategy went on to be a highly influential work in the world of business strategy. | An Analysis of Michael E. Porter's Competitive Strategy Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors

GBP 6.50
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An Analysis of Geoffrey Parker's Global Crisis War Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century

An Analysis of Geoffrey Parker's Global Crisis War Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century

Few historians can claim to have undertaken historical analysis on as grand a scale as Geoffrey Parker in his 2013 work Global Crisis: War Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century. It is a doorstop of a book that surveys the ‘general crisis of the 17th century ’ shows that it was experienced practically throughout the world and was not merely a European phenomenon and links it to the impact of climate change in the form of the advent of a cold period known as the ‘Little Ice Age. ’ Parker’s triumph is made possible by the deployment of formidable critical thinking skills – reasoning to construct an engaging overall argument from very disparate material and analysis to re-examine and understand the plethora of complex secondary sources on which his book is built. In critical thinking analysis is all about understanding the features and structures of argument: how given reasons lead to conclusions and what kinds of implicit reasons and assumptions are being used. Historical analysis applies the same skills to the fabric of history asking how given chains of events occur how different reasons and factors interact and so on. Parker though takes things further than most in his quest to understand the meaning of a century’s-worth of turbulence spread across the whole globe. Beginning by breaking down the evidence for significant climatic cooling in the 17th-century (due to decreased solar activity) he moves on to detailed study of the effects the cooling had on societies and regimes across the world. From this detailed spadework he constructs a persuasive argument that accounts for the different ways in which the effects of climate change played out across the century – an argument with profound implications for a future likely to see serious climate change of its own. | An Analysis of Geoffrey Parker's Global Crisis War Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century

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An Analysis of Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust

An Analysis of Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust

Daniel Goldhagen's study of the Holocaust offers conclusions that run directly counter to those reached by Christopher Browning whose book Ordinary Men is also the subject of a Macat analysis. As such the two analyses make possible some interesting critical thinking exercises focused on evaluation of the evidence used by the two historians. For Goldhagen a chief reason for German actions was not the mundane good comradeship stressed by Browning but a longstanding hatred of Jews and Judaism specific to Germany that dated back well into the previous century. Debating which historian is right which has made better use of the available evidence which has most successfully written objectively – and which advances the most secure interpretation of contested documents – forces students to think critically about one of the most important and (on the surface at least) incomprehensible events of the past century. | An Analysis of Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust

GBP 6.50
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An Analysis of Amartya Sen's Inequality Re-Examined

An Analysis of Amartya Sen's Inequality Re-Examined

Amartya Sen’s Inequality Re-Examined is a seminal text setting out a theory to evaluate social arrangements and inequality. By asking the question ‘equality of what’? Sen shows that (in)equality should be assessed as human freedom; for people to have the ability to pursue and achieve goals they value or have reason to value. The text lays out the fundamental ideas to Amartya Sen’s Capability Approach. This approach is celebrated in diverse academic disciplines because of its specific contribution towards the improvement to debates on inequality beyond economic deprivation and utility measures. Furthermore the arguments put forward by Sen in Inequality Re-Examined has had many practical applications throughout policy circles including the Human Development Index the Multi –Dimensional Poverty Measure the compilation of lists of capabilities and drawing further attention to human agency and democracy. Amartya Sen won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1998 for his contribution to welfare economics; the core arguments of this work is found in this book. | An Analysis of Amartya Sen's Inequality Re-Examined

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An Analysis of Alfred W. Crosby's The Columbian Exchange Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492

An Analysis of Alfred W. Crosby's The Columbian Exchange Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492

One criticism of history is that historians all too often study it in isolation failing to take advantage of models and evidence from scholars in other disciplines. This is not a charge that can be laid at the door of Alfred Crosby. His book The Columbian Exchange not only incorporates the results of wide reading in the hard sciences anthropology and geography but also stands as one of the foundation stones of the study of environmental history. In this sense Crosby's defining work is undoubtedly a fine example of the critical thinking skill of creativity; it comes up with new connections that explain the European success in colonizing the New World more as the product of biological catastrophe (in the shape of the introduction of new diseases) than of the actions of men and posits that the most important consequences were not political – the establishment of new empires – but cultural and culinary; the population of China tripled for example as the result of the introduction of new world crops. Few new hypotheses have proved as stimulating or influential. | An Analysis of Alfred W. Crosby's The Columbian Exchange Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492

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An Analysis of Hannah Arendt's The Human Condition

An Analysis of Hannah Arendt's The Human Condition

Hannah Arendt’s 1958 The Human Condition was an impassioned philosophical reconsideration of the goals of being human. In its arguments about the kind of lives we should lead and the political engagement we should strive for Arendt’s interpretative skills come to the fore in a brilliant display of what high-level interpretation can achieve for critical thinking. Good interpretative thinkers are characterised by their ability to clarify meanings question accepted definitions and posit good clear definitions that allow their other critical thinking skills to take arguments deeper and further than most. In many ways The Human Condition is all about definitions. Arendt’s aim is to lay out an argument for political engagement and active participation in society as the highest goals of human life; and to this end she sets about defining a hierarchy of ways of living a “vita activa ” or active life. The book sets about distinguishing between our different activities under the categories of “labor” “work” and “action” – each of which Arendt carefully redefines as a different level of active engagement with the world. Following her clear and careful laying out of each word’s meaning it becomes hard to deny her argument for the life of “action” as the highest human goal. | An Analysis of Hannah Arendt's The Human Condition

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An Analysis of Eric Hoffer's The True Believer Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements

An Analysis of Eric Hoffer's The True Believer Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements

Eric Hoffer’s The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements is one of the most widely read works of social psychology written in the 20th-century. It exemplifies the powers of creative thinking and critical analysis at their best providing an insight into two crucial elements of critical thinking. Hoffer is likely to go down in history as one of America’s great creative thinkers – a writer not bound by standard frameworks of thinking or academic conventions willing to beat his own path in framing the best possible answers to the questions he investigated. An impoverished largely unschooled manual laborer who had survived the worst effects of the Great Depression in the United States Hoffer was a passionate autodidact whose philosophical and psychological education came from omnivorous reading. Working without the help of any mentors he forged the fearsomely creative and individual approach to problems demonstrated in The True Believer. The book which earned him his reputation examines the different phenomena of fanaticism – religious or political – and applies Hoffer’s analytical skills to reveal that deep down all ‘true believers’ display the same needs and tendencies whatever their final choice of belief. Incisive and persuasive it remains a classic. | An Analysis of Eric Hoffer's The True Believer Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements

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An Analysis of Mahmood Mamdani's Citizen and Subject Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism

An Analysis of Mahmood Mamdani's Citizen and Subject Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism

Mahmood Mamdani’s 1996 Citizen and Subject is a powerful work of analysis that lays bare the sources of the problems that plagued and often still plague African governments. Analysis is one of the broadest and most fundamental critical thinking skills and involves understanding the structure and features of arguments. Mamdani’s strong analytical skills form the basis of an original investigation of the problems faced by the independent African governments in the wake of the collapse of the colonial regimes imposed by European powers such has Great Britain and France. It had long been clear that these newly-independent governments faced many problems – corruption the imposition of anti-democratic rule and many basic failures of day-to-day governance. They also tended to replicate many of the racially and ethnically prejudiced structures that were part of colonial rule. Mamdani analyses the many arguments about the sources of these problems drawing out their hidden implications and assumptions in order to clear the way for his own creative new vision of the way to overcome the obstacles to democratization in Africa. A dense and brilliant analysis of the true nature of colonialism’s legacy in Africa Mamdani’s book remains influential to this day. | An Analysis of Mahmood Mamdani's Citizen and Subject Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism

GBP 6.50
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An Analysis of Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

An Analysis of Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

The German sociologist Max Weber is considered to be one of the founding fathers of sociology and ranks among the most influential writers of the 20th-century. His most famous book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism is a masterpiece of sociological analysis whose power is based on the construction of a rigorous and intricately interlinked piece of argumentation. Weber’s object was to examine the relationship between the development of capitalism and the different religious ideologies of Europe. While many other scholars focused on the material and instrumental causes of capitalism’s emergence Weber sought to demonstrate that different religious beliefs in fact played a significant role. In order to do this he employed his analytical skills to understand the relationship between capitalism and religious ideology carefully considering how far Protestant and secular capitalist ethics overlapped and to what extent they mirrored each other. One crucial element of Weber’s work was his consideration the degree to which cultural values acted as implicit or hidden reasons reinforcing capitalist ethics and behavior – an investigation that he based on teasing out the ‘arguments’ that underpin capitalism. Incisive and insightful Weber’s analysis continues to resonate with scholars today. | An Analysis of Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

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An Analysis of Saba Mahmood's Politics of Piety The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject

An Analysis of Saba Mahmood's Politics of Piety The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject

Saba Mahmood’s 2005 Politics of Piety is an excellent example of evaluation in action. Mahmood’s book is a study of women’s participation in the Islamic revival across the Middle East. Mahmood – a feminist social anthropologist with left-wing secular political values – wanted to understand why women should become such active participants in a movement that seemingly promoted their subjugation. As Mahmood observed women’s active participation in the conservative Islamic revival presented (and presents) a difficult question for Western feminists: how to balance cultural sensitivity and promotion of religious freedom and pluralism with the feminist project of women’s liberation? Mahmood’s response was to conduct a detailed evaluation of the arguments made by both sides examining in particular the reasoning of female Muslims themselves. In a key moment of evaluation Mahmood suggests that Western feminist notions of agency are inadequate to arguments about female Muslim piety. Where Western feminists often restrict definitions of women’s agency to acts that undermine the normal male-dominated order of things Mahmood suggests instead that agency can encompass female acts that uphold apparently patriarchal values. Ultimately the Western feminist framework is in her evaluation inadequate and insufficient for discussing women’s groups in the Islamic revival. | An Analysis of Saba Mahmood's Politics of Piety The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject

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An Analysis of Jane Jacobs's The Death and Life of Great American Cities

An Analysis of Jane Jacobs's The Death and Life of Great American Cities

Despite having no formal training in urban planning Jane Jacobs deftly explores the strengths and weaknesses of policy arguments put forward by American urban planners in the era after World War II. They believed that the efficient movement of cars was of more value in the development of US cities than the everyday lives of the people living there. By carefully examining their relevance in her 1961 book The Death and Life of Great American Cities Jacobs dismantles these arguments by highlighting their shortsightedness. She evaluates the information to hand and comes to a very different conclusion that urban planners ruin great cities because they don’t understand that it is a city’s social interaction that makes it great. Proposals and policies that are drawn from planning theory do not consider the social dynamics of city life. They are in thrall to futuristic fantasies of a modern way of living that bears no relation to reality or to the desires of real people living in real spaces. Professionals lobby for separation and standardization splitting commercial residential industrial and cultural spaces. But a truly visionary approach to urban planning should incorporate spaces with mixed uses together with short walkable blocks large concentrations of people and a mix of new and old buildings. This creates true urban vitality. | An Analysis of Jane Jacobs's The Death and Life of Great American Cities

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An Analysis of Leon Festinger's A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance

An Analysis of Leon Festinger's A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance

Leon Festinger’s 1957 A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance is a key text in the history of psychology – one that made its author one of the most influential social psychologists of his time. It is also a prime example of how creative thinking and problem solving skills can come together to produce work that changes the way people look at questions for good. Strong creative thinkers are able to look at things from a new perspective often to the point of challenging the very frames in which those around them see things. Festinger was such a creative thinker leading what came to be known as the “cognitive revolution” in social psychology. When Festinger was carrying out his research the dominant school of thought – behaviorism – focused on outward behaviors and their effects. Festinger however turned his attention elsewhere looking at “cognition:” the mental processes behind behaviors. In the case of “cognitive dissonance” for example he hypothesized that apparently incomprehensible or illogical behaviors might be caused by a cognitive drive away from dissonance or internal contradiction. This perspective however raised a problem: how to examine and test out cognitive processes. Festinger’s book records the results of the psychological experiments he designed to solve that problem. The results helped prove the existence for what is now a fundamental theory in social psychology. | An Analysis of Leon Festinger's A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance

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An Analysis of Nassim Nicholas Taleb's The Black Swan The Impact of the Highly Improbable

An Analysis of Nassim Nicholas Taleb's The Black Swan The Impact of the Highly Improbable

One of the primary qualities of good creative thinking is an intellectual freedom to think outside of the box. Good creative thinkers resist orthodox ideas take new lines of enquiry and generally come at problems from the kinds of angles almost no one else could. And what is more when the ideas of creative thinkers are convincing they can reshape an entire topic and change the orthodoxy for good. Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s 2007 bestseller The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable is precisely such a book: an entertaining polemical creative attack on how people in general and economic experts in particular view the possibility of catastrophic events. Taleb writes with rare creative verve for someone who is also an expert in mathematics finance and epistemology (the philosophy of knowledge) and he martials all his skills to turn standard reasoning inside out. His central point is that far from being unimportant extremely rare events are frequently the most important ones of all: it is highly improbable but highly consequential occurrences – what he calls Black Swans – that have shaped history most. As a result Taleb concludes improbability is not a reason to act as if a possible event does not matter. Rather it should inspire the opposite reaction. | An Analysis of Nassim Nicholas Taleb's The Black Swan The Impact of the Highly Improbable

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An Analysis of Henry Kissinger's World Order Reflections on the Character of Nations and the Course of History

An Analysis of Henry Kissinger's World Order Reflections on the Character of Nations and the Course of History

Henry Kissinger’s 2014 book World Order: Reflections on the Character of Nations and the Course of History not only offers a summary of thinking developed throughout a long and highly influential career–it is also an intervention in international relations theory by one of the most famous statesmen of the twentieth century. Kissinger initially trained as a university professor before becoming Secretary of State to President Richard Nixon in 1973 – a position in which he both won the Nobel Peace Prize and was accused of war crimes by protesters against American military actions in Vietnam. While a controversial figure Kissinger is widely agreed to have a unique level of practical and theoretical expertise in politics and international relations – and World Order is the culmination of a lifetime’s experience of work in those fields. The product of a master of the critical thinking skill of interpretation World Order takes on the challenge of defining the worldviews at play in global politics today. Clarifying precisely what is meant by the different notions of ‘order’ imagined by nations across the world as Kissinger does highlights the challenges of world politics and sharpens the focus on efforts to make surmounting these divisions possible. While Kissinger’s own reputation will likely remain equivocal there is no doubting the interpretative skills he displays in this engaging and illuminating text. | An Analysis of Henry Kissinger's World Order Reflections on the Character of Nations and the Course of History

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An Analysis of David Graeber's Debt The First 5 000 Years

An Analysis of David Graeber's Debt The First 5 000 Years

Debt is one of the great subjects of our day and understanding the way that it not only fuels economic growth but can also be used as a means of generating profit and exerting control is central to grasping the way in which our society really works. David Graeber's contribution to this debate is to apply his anthropologists' training to the understanding of a phenomenon often considered purely from an economic point of view. In this respect the book can be considered a fine example of the critical thinking skill of problem-solving. Graeber's main aim is to undermine the dominant narrative which sees debt as the natural – and broadly healthy – outcome of the development of a modern economic system. He marshals evidence that supports alternative possibilities and suggests that the phenomenon of debt emerged not as a result of the introduction of money but at precisely the same time. This in turn allows Graeber to argue against the prevailing notion that economy and state are fundamentally separate entities. Rather he says the two were born together and have always been intertwined – with debt being a means of enforcing elite and state power. For Graeber this evaluation of the evidence points to a strong potential solution: there should be more readiness to write off debt and more public involvement in the debate over debt and its moral implications. | An Analysis of David Graeber's Debt The First 5 000 Years

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An Analysis of Marcus Aurelius's Meditations

An Analysis of Marcus Aurelius's Meditations

Despite being written between 170 and 180 Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations often resonates with modern readers because of its remarkable resemblance to a self-help book. Written as a series of personal notes in the last decade of his reign as Roman emperor the meditations were never intended for circulation. But they remain today among the classics of stoic philosophy – and as exquisite examples of problem-solving. Meditations sees a great leader engaged in solving one of the central problems of all philosophy: how to live a good life. Marcus Aurelius is quick to ask questions and generate solutions all of which lead him to a greater understanding of what a good life really is. He makes the decision that philosophy is an important tool we can use every day to help us understand and deal with the world. The best way to get to the bottom of a problem he records is to analyze its different aspects with care – this will help to ‘dissolve’ the issue. To keep our minds well balanced it is vital to keep our desire for the material and the sensual in check to avoid falling prey to negative behaviors like jealousy quarrelling and indulgence. Philosophy the Meditations show can also help us to understand other people’s problems and difficulties – acting as a continual spur to the consideration and resolution of problems wherever they arise. | An Analysis of Marcus Aurelius's Meditations

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An Analysis of Christopher R. Browning's Ordinary Men Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland

An Analysis of Christopher R. Browning's Ordinary Men Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland

Of all the controversies facing historians today few are more divisive or more important than the question of how the Holocaust was possible. What led thousands of Germans – many of them middle-aged reservists with apparently little Nazi zeal – to willingly commit acts of genocide? Was it ideology? Was there something rotten in the German soul? Or was it – as Christopher Browning argues in this highly influential book – more a matter of conformity a response to intolerable social and psychological pressure? Ordinary Men is a microhistory the detailed study of a single unit in the Nazi killing machine. Browning evaluates a wide range of evidence to seek to explain the actions of the ordinary men who made up reserve Police Battalion 101 taking advantage of the wide range of resources prepared in the early 1960s for a proposed war crimes trial. He concludes that his subjects were not evil; rather their actions are best explained by a desire to be part of a team not to shirk responsibility that would otherwise fall on the shoulders of comrades and a willingness to obey authority. Browning's ability to explore the strengths and weaknesses of arguments – both the survivors' and other historians' – is what sets his work apart from other studies that have attempted to get to the root of the motivations for the Holocaust and it is also what marks Ordinary Men as one of the most important works of its generation. | An Analysis of Christopher R. Browning's Ordinary Men Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland

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An Analysis of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique

An Analysis of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique

Betty Friedan's book The Feminine Mystique is possibly the best-selling of all the titles analysed in the Macat library and arguably one of the most important. Yet it was the product of an apparently minor meaningless assignment. Undertaking to approach former classmates who had attended Smith College with her 10 years after their graduation the high-achieving Friedan was astonished to discover that the survey she had undertaken for a magazine feature revealed a high proportion of her contemporaries were suffering from a malaise she had thought was unique to her: profound dissatisfaction at the ‘ideal’ lives they had been living as wives mothers and homemakers. For Friedan this discovery stimulated a remarkable burst of creative thinking as she began to connect the elements of her own life together in new ways. The popular idea that men and women were equal but different – that men found their greatest fulfilment through work while women were most fulfilled in the home – stood revealed as a fallacy and the depression and even despair she and so many other women felt as a result was recast not as a failure to adapt to a role that was the truest expression of femininity but as the natural product of undertaking repetitive unfulfilling and unremunerated labor. Friedan's seminal expression of these new ideas redefined an issue central to many women's lives so successfully that it fuelled a movement – the ‘second wave’ feminism of the 1960s and 1970s that fundamentally challenged the legal and social framework underpinning an entire society. | An Analysis of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique

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