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An Analysis of William Cronon's Nature's Metropolis Chicago and the Great West

An Analysis of William Cronon's Nature's Metropolis Chicago and the Great West

What caused the rise of Chicago and how did the city's expansion fuel the westward movement of the American frontier – and influence the type of society that evolved as a result? Nature's Metropolis emerged as a result of William Cronon asking and answering those questions and the work can usefully be seen as an extended example of the critical thinking skill of problem-solving in action. Cronon navigates a path between the followers of Frederick Jackson Turner author of the thesis that American character was shaped by the experience of the frontier and revisionists who sought to suggest that the rugged individualism Turner depicted as a creation of life in the West was little but a fiction. For Cronon the most productive question to ask was not whether or not men forged in the liberty-loving furnace of the Wild West had the sort of impact on America that Turner posited but the quite different one of how capitalism and political economy had combined to drive the westward expansion of the US. For Cronon individualism was scarcely even possible in a capitalist machine in which humans were little more than cogs and the needs and demands of capital not capitalists prevailed. Nature's Metropolis then is a work in which the rise of Chicago is explained by generating alternative possibilities and one that uses a rigorous study of the evidence to decide between competing solutions to the problem. It is also a fine work of interpretation for a large part of Cronon's argument revolves around his attempt to define exactly what is rural and what is urban and how the two interact to create a novel economic force. | An Analysis of William Cronon's Nature's Metropolis Chicago and the Great West

GBP 6.50
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An Analysis of Carlo Ginzburg's The Night Battles Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

An Analysis of Carlo Ginzburg's The Night Battles Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

In The Night Battles Carlo Ginzburg does more than introduce his readers to a novel group of supposed witches – the Benandanti from the northern Italian province of Friulia. He also invents and deploys new and creative ways of tackling his source material that allow him to move beyond their limitations. Witchcraft documents are notoriously tricky sources – produced by elites with fixed views they are products of questioning designed to prove or disprove guilt rather than understand the subtleties of belief and are very often the products of torture. Ginzburg placed great stress on variations in the evidence of the Benandanti over time to reveal changing patterns of belief and also focused on the concept of ‘reading against the text’ – essentially looking as much at what is absent from the record as at what is present in it and attempting to understand what the absences mean. His work not only pioneered the creation of a new school of historical study – ‘microhistory’ – it is also a great example of the creative thinking skills of connecting things together in an original way producing novel explanations for existing evidence and redefining an issue so as to see it in a new light. | An Analysis of Carlo Ginzburg's The Night Battles Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

GBP 6.50
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An Analysis of Ha-Joon Chang's Kicking Away the Ladder Development Strategy in Historical Perspective

An Analysis of Ha-Joon Chang's Kicking Away the Ladder Development Strategy in Historical Perspective

South Korean economist Ha-Joon Chang used his 2003 work Kicking Away The Ladder to challenge the central orthodoxies of development economics using his creative thinking skills to shine new light on an old topic. Creative thinkers are often distinguished by their willingness to challenge received ideas and this is a central aspect of Chang’s work on development. Before Chang the received wisdom was that developing countries needed the same kinds of economic policies and institutions as developed countries in order to enjoy the same prosperity. But as Chang pointed out the historical evidence showed that First World economic success was in fact due to exactly the kinds of state intervention that modern development orthodoxy shuns. Western affluence is the product of precisely the kinds of state control – of protectionism and the setting of price tariffs – that developed countries have since denied the developing world in the name of economic freedom and ‘best practice. ’ By insisting that Third World nations should adopt these economic policies themselves argued Chang the West is actually stifling Third World economic prospects – kicking away the ladder. His carefully reasoned argument for a novel point of view was closely based on the critical thinking skill of producing novel explanations for existing evidence and led many to question development orthodoxies – sparking a rethink of modern development strategies for less-developed countries. | An Analysis of Ha-Joon Chang's Kicking Away the Ladder Development Strategy in Historical Perspective

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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 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

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An Analysis of Chris Argyris's Integrating the Individual and the Organization

An Analysis of Chris Argyris's Integrating the Individual and the Organization

A critical analysis of Argyris’s Integrating The Individual and the Organization which forms part of a series of essays and books considering how organisations should be run. The essay explores the lack of congruence between the needs and expectations of individual employees and the organisations that employ them. The impact of the work depends heavily on reasoning skills. Chris Argyris used strong well-structured arguments to make his point. His reasoning has strong implications for solving a problem that many organizations experience: disengaged and disloyal employees. Grounding his argument in studies on human nature Argyris highlighted that demands of greater independence an expansion of interests and re-orientation of goals usually accompany maturation which is at odds with higher control stemming from formal organisations. This frustration he contends is detrimental to productivity increases the chance of failure and causes conflict. | An Analysis of Chris Argyris's Integrating the Individual and the Organization

GBP 6.50
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An Analysis of N.T. Wright's The New Testament and the People of God

An Analysis of N.T. Wright's The New Testament and the People of God

Wright’s The New Testament and the People of God is the first volume of his acclaimed series ‘Christian Origins and the Question of God’ comprehensively addressing the historical and theological questions surrounding the origins of Christianity. The text outlines Wright's hermeneutical theory and discusses the history of the Jews stressing the close connection with Judaism and developing this to examine the treatment of early Christians. Wright’s work has played a significant role in challenging prevailing assumptions relating to the religious thought of first-century Jews. On a more technical level Wright provides a reappraisal of literary and historical readings of the New Testament. | An Analysis of N. T. Wright's The New Testament and the People of God

GBP 6.50
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An Analysis of St. Augustine's The City of God Against the Pagans

An Analysis of St. Augustine's The City of God Against the Pagans

The City of God against the Pagans is a central text in the Western intellectual tradition. Made up of twenty-two lengthy books Augustine wrote his masterpiece over a thirteen-year period during which the Western Roman Empire began to unravel. The first ten books are a critique of pagan religion and philosophy while books eleven to twenty-two treat the relationship between the City of God and the Earthly City. Throughout Augustine conveys his mature vision of what it means for a Christian to live in a world with evil. Its arguments and ideas have provoked debate for nearly 1600 years and remains a central text in the disciplines of theology historiography and political theory. | An Analysis of St. Augustine's The City of God Against the Pagans

GBP 6.50
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An Analysis of Roland Barthes's The Death of the Author

An Analysis of Roland Barthes's The Death of the Author

Roland Barthes’s 1967 essay The Death of the Author argues against the traditional practice of incorporating the intentions and biographical context of an author into textual interpretation because of the resultant limitations imposed on a text. Hailing the birth of the reader Barthes posits a new abstract notion of the reader as the conceptual space containing all the text’s possible meanings. The essay has become one of the most cited works in literary criticism and is a key text for any reader approaching reader response theory. | An Analysis of Roland Barthes's The Death of the Author

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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

GBP 6.50
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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

GBP 6.50
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An Analysis of Bernard Bailyn's The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution

An Analysis of Bernard Bailyn's The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution

Historians of the American Revolution had always seen the struggle for independence either as a conflict sparked by heavyweight ideology or as a war between opposing social groups acting out of self-interest. In The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution Bernard Bailyn begged to differ re-examining familiar evidence to establish new connections that in turn allowed him to generate fresh explanations. His influential reconceptualizing of the underlying reasons for America's independence drive focused instead on pamphleteering – and specifically on the actions of an influential group of ‘conspirators’ who identified and were determined to protect a particularly American set of values. For Bailyn these ideas could indeed be traced back to the ferment of the English Civil War – stemming from radical pamphleteers whose anti-authoritarian ideas crossed the Atlantic and embedded themselves in colonial ideology. Bailyn's thesis helps to explain the Revolution's success by pointing out how deep-rooted its founding ideas were; the Founding Fathers may have been reading Locke but the men they led were inspired by shorter pithier and altogether far more radical works. Only by understanding this Bailyn argues can we understand the passion and determination that allowed the rebel American states to defeat a global superpower. | An Analysis of Bernard Bailyn's The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution

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An Analysis of Samuel P. Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order

An Analysis of Samuel P. Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order

The end of the Cold War which occurred early in the 1990s brought joy and freedom to millions. But it posed a difficult question to the world's governments and to the academics who studied them: how would world order be remade in an age no longer dominated by the competing ideologies of capitalism and communism? Samuel P. Huntington was one of the many political scientists who responded to this challenge by conceiving works that attempted to predict the ways in which conflict might play out in the 21st century and in The Clash of Civilizations he suggested that a new kind of conflict one centred on cultural identity would become the new focus of international relations. Huntington's theories greeted with scepticism when his book first appeared in the 1990s acquired new resonance after 9/11. The Clash of Civilizations is now one of the most widely-set and read works of political theory in US universities; Huntington's theories have also had a measurable impact on American policy. In large part this is a product of his problem-solving skills. Clash is a monument to its author's ability to generate and evaluate alternative possibilities and to make sound decisions between them. Huntington's view that international politics after the Cold War would be neither peaceful nor liberal nor cooperative ran counter to the predictions of almost all of his peers yet his position – the product of an unusual ability to redefine an issue so as to see it in new ways – has been largely vindicated by events ever since. | An Analysis of Samuel P. Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order

GBP 6.50
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An Analysis of C.L.R. James's The Black Jacobins

An Analysis of C.L.R. James's The Black Jacobins

Today we take it for granted that history is much more than the story of great men and the elites from which they spring. Other forms of history – the histories of gender class rebellion and nonconformity – add much-needed context and color to our understanding of the past. But this has not always been so. In CLR James’s The Black Jacobins we have one of the earliest and most defining examples of how ‘history from below’ ought to be written. James's approach is based on his need to resolve two central problems: to understand why the Haitian slave revolt was the only example of a successful slave rebellion in history and also to grasp the ways in which its history was intertwined with the history of the French Revolution. The book's originality and its value rests on its author's ability to ask and answer productive questions of this sort and in the creativity with which he proved able to generate new hypotheses as a result. As any enduring work of history must be The Black Jacobins is rooted in sound archival research – but its true greatness lies in the originality of James's approach. | An Analysis of C. L. R. James's The Black Jacobins

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An Analysis of Frederick Jackson Turner's The Significance of the Frontier in American History

An Analysis of Frederick Jackson Turner's The Significance of the Frontier in American History

Frederick Jackson Turner's 1893 essay on the history of the United States remains one of the most famous and influential works in the American canon. That is a testament to Turner's powers of creative synthesis; in a few short pages he succeeded in redefining the way in which whole generations of Americans understood the manner in which their country was shaped and their own character moulded by the frontier experience. It is largely thanks to Turner's influence that the idea of America as the home of a sturdily independent people – one prepared ultimately to obtain justice for themselves if they could not find it elsewhere – was born. The impact of these ideas can still be felt today: in many Americans' suspicion of big government in their attachment to guns – even in Star Trek's vision of space as the final frontier. Turner's thesis may now be criticised as limited (in its exclusion of women) and over-stated (in its focus on the western frontier). That it redefined an issue in a highly impactful way – and that it did so exceptionally eloquently – cannot be doubted. | An Analysis of Frederick Jackson Turner's The Significance of the Frontier in American History

GBP 6.50
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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

GBP 6.50
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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 Hanna Batatu's The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq

An Analysis of Hanna Batatu's The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq

How do you solve a problem like understanding Iraq? For Hanna Batatu the solution to this conundrum lay in generating alternative possibilities that effectively side-stepped the conventional wisdom of the time. Historians had long held that Iraq – like other artificial creations of ex-colonial European powers who drew lines onto the world map that ignored longstanding tribal ethnic and religious ties – was best understood by delving into its political and religious history. Batatu used the problem solving skills of asking productive questions and generating alternative possibilities to argue that Iraq’s history was better understood through the lens of a Marxist analysis focused on socio-economic history. The Old Social Classes concludes that the divisions present in Iraq – and exposed by the revolutionary movements of the 1950s – are those characterized by the struggle for control over property and the means of production. Additionally Batatu sought to establish that the most important political movements of the time notably the nationalist Ba'athists and the pan-Arab Free Officers Movement had their origins in a homegrown communist ideology inspired by local conditions and local inequality. By posing new questions – and by undertaking a vast amount of research in primary sources a rarity in the history of this region – Batatu was able to produce a strong new solution to a longstanding historiographical puzzle. | An Analysis of Hanna Batatu's The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq

GBP 6.50
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An Analysis of Walter Benjamin's The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

An Analysis of Walter Benjamin's The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction combats traditional art criticism’s treatment of artworks as fixed unchanging mystical objects. For Walter Benjamin the consequences of addressing a work of art in this manner have a wider resonance: closed off from any active visual or tactile engagement the work of art becomes an object of passive contemplation and a potential tool of oppression. Benjamin argues that technology has fundamentally altered the way art is experienced. Potentially open to interpretation and accessible to many art in the age of mechanical reproduction has the potential to be mobilized for radical purposes. While ostensibly addressing the artistic consequences of technical reproducibility on art Benjamin also addresses the wider political consequences of this shift. | An Analysis of Walter Benjamin's The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

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An Analysis of James Surowiecki's The Wisdom of Crowds Why the Many are Smarter than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business Econ

An Analysis of James Surowiecki's The Wisdom of Crowds Why the Many are Smarter than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business Econ

In The Wisdom of Crowds New Yorker columnist Surowiecki explores the question of whether the many are better than an elite few – no matter their qualifications – at solving problems promoting innovation and making wise decisions. Surowiecki’s text uses multiple case studies and touches on the arenas of pop culture sociology business management and behavioural economics among others. Surowiecki’s is a fascinating text that is key to considerations and theorisations about economics politics and sociology. | An Analysis of James Surowiecki's The Wisdom of Crowds Why the Many are Smarter than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business Econ

GBP 6.50
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An Analysis of Moses Maimonides's Guide for the Perplexed

An Analysis of Moses Maimonides's Guide for the Perplexed

Written by the great medieval Jewish philosopher Maimonides The Guide of the Perplexed attempts to explain the perplexities of biblical language—and apparent inconsistencies in the text—in the light of philosophy and scientific reason. Composed as a letter to a student The Guide aims to harmonize Aristotelian principles with the Hebrew Bible and argues that God must be understood as both unified and incorporeal. Engaging both contemporary and ancient scholars Maimonides fluidly moves from cosmology to the problem of evil to the end goal of human happiness. His intellectual breadth and openness makes The Guide a lasting model of creative synthesis in biblical studies and philosophical theology. | An Analysis of Moses Maimonides's Guide for the Perplexed

GBP 5.99
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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 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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An Analysis of Carole Hillenbrand's The Crusades Islamic Perspectives

An Analysis of Carole Hillenbrand's The Crusades Islamic Perspectives

For many centuries the history of the crusades as written by Western historians was based solidly on Western sources. Evidence from the Islamic societies that the crusaders attacked was used only sparingly – in part because it was hard for most westerners to read and in part because much of it was inaccessible even for historians who did speak Arabic. Carole Hillenbrand set out to re-evaluate the sources for the crusading period not only looking with fresh eyes at known accounts but also locating and utilizing new sources that had previously been overlooked. Her work involved her in conducting extensive evaluations of the new sources assessing their arguments their evidence and their reasoning in order to assess their value and (using the critical thinking skill of analysis a powerful method for understanding how arguments are built) to place them correctly in the context of crusade studies as a whole. The result is not only a history that is more balanced better argued and more adequate than most that have gone before it but also a work with relevance for today. At a time when crusading imagery and mentions of the current War on Terror as a ‘crusade’ help to fuel political narrative Hillenbrand's evaluative work acts as an important corrective to oversimplification and misrepresentation. | An Analysis of Carole Hillenbrand's The Crusades Islamic Perspectives

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An Analysis of Jacques Derrida's Structure Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences

An Analysis of Jacques Derrida's Structure Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences

Jacques Derrida’s Structure Sign and Play is one of the most controversial and influential philosophical texts of the 20th century. Delivered at a conference on structuralism at Johns Hopkins the lecture took aim at the critical and philosophical fashions of the time and radically proposing a world in which meaning cannot be pinned down or traced to an origin but instead is continuously shifting fleeting and open to play. Hailed by many as a watershed in philosophy and literary theory Derrida’s lecture has shaped both disciplines. At once dense brilliant and humorous it is a crucial read for anyone interested in questioning our natural assumptions about meaning in the world. | An Analysis of Jacques Derrida's Structure Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences

GBP 6.50
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