Politics & Government
As far as topics go, politics may be as divisive as they come. Still, there's no escaping the role that it plays in our lives. The texts in this collection explore the gamut of how politics shapes and reshapes societies throughout history.
12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos (2018) is Jordan B. Peterson’s second book. Peterson’s self-help book seeks to provide practical and virtuous rules to live by for a wide audience and general readership. The book streamlines, simplifies, and reimagines some of the more traditionally academic topics of Peterson’s first book, Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief. Each non-fiction work aims to explain human history and human nature according to universal frameworks. 12... Read 12 Rules for Life Summary
1776 is a biography of the American Revolutionary War written by historian David McCullough. Published in 2006, the book is a companion piece to John Adams (2001), a biography McCullough wrote about the second US president. Though the Revolutionary War did not officially end until the Treaty of Paris was signed in 1783, the text follows George Washington, King George III, Nathanael Greene, Henry Knox, and other key figures as it examines crucial military events... Read 1776 Summary
George Orwell’s dystopian novel1984 (also written as Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel) was originally published in 1949 and is regarded as a literary classic. Orwell was known for social and political criticism in his writing. He supported democratic socialism and opposed totalitarianism—political stances that come through in the themes of his most well-known works.Edition note: This novel is available in the public domain in many countries, and this summary is based on the electronically published version... Read 1984 Summary
Published in 2015, $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America is a nonfiction investigation into how a new form of virtually cashless poverty emerged in the United States. Authors Kathryn J. Edin and H. Luke Shaefer are both academics with extensive experience researching poverty, but it is only in recent years that they have come across households with almost no cash income at all. There are now 1.5 million families with children in... Read $2.00 a Day Summary
21 Lessons for the 21st Century (2018) is historian, philosopher, and acclaimed author Yuval Noah Harari’s in-depth look at the current global affairs and the immediate future of humankind. To Harari, the merging of biotechnology and artificial intelligence potentially represents the end of history with some humans becoming godlike. Despite the ramification of this situation on all of humanity, most people are distracted by irrelevant information and do not realize the debate that is occurring... Read 21 Lessons for the 21st Century Summary
This study guide references the 1990 Oxford University Press edition of James M. McPherson’s Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution. The book is a collection of seven essays originally delivered as lectures, all on the 16th president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, and his role in the Civil War (1861-1865). The book calls the Civil War era the “Second American Revolution” because, with Lincoln’s help, it brought about a fundamental transformation in the... Read Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution Summary
John Dryden’s “Absalom and Achitophel” was first published in 1681, in direct response to a political crisis faced by King Charles II from 1679 to 1681. In what became known as the “Exclusion Crisis,” the king’s opponents in Parliament tried to exclude Charles’s brother James from the succession on the grounds that he was a Roman Catholic. “Absalom and Achitophel” is a satiric narrative poem in which Dryden uses a biblical allegory to discuss the... Read Absalom and Achitophel Summary
Accidental Death of an Anarchist was first written and produced by playwright and actor Dario Fo in Italy, 1970. The script was directly inspired by the events surrounding the 1969 Piazza Fontana Bombing, and much of Fo’s work revolves around political satire directed at Italy post-World War II and later. Exemplifying Fo’s work as a writer, Accidental Death of an Anarchist combines the humor, irony, and satire of the old Italian tradition of commedia dell’arte... Read Accidental Death Of An Anarchist Summary
Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim in the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation is a book by Eboo Patel. Part memoir, part treatise on the vulnerability of youth who are preyed upon and radicalized by religious zealots, the book examines Patel’s search for his identity, following him from childhood to his time as the founder of the Interfaith Youth Core group. Themes of faith, family, religious doubt, pluralism, and the... Read Acts Of Faith Summary
Written and first performed in 1960 as part of the national celebrations of Nigeria’s independence from Britain, A Dance of the Forests features a unique combination of classically European dramatic elements and traditional Yoruba masquerade traditions which make the play resistant to both staging and traditional Western criticism. Since 1960, few attempts have been made to perform the play, due to its complexity and ambiguity. A Dance of the Forests presents an allegorical criticism of... Read A Dance of the Forests Summary
A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America by Ronald Takaki is a revisionist account of American history that provides an in-depth view of America as a country populated and built by diverse peoples of the world. Originally published in 1993 by Little, Brown and Company, this study guide uses the updated 2008 edition. In 1994 A Different Mirror received an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for its contributions to advancing understandings of racism and human diversity.Takaki’s... Read A Different Mirror Summary
A Few Good Men is a play written by Aaron Sorkin and first performed in 1989. The story involves a military lawyer who defends two Marines accused of murder. The play was well-received, and Sorkin adapted it into a screenplay for the film of the same name (released in 1992), which was a popular and critical success.Plot SummaryA Few Good Men opens as two Marines, Downey and Dawson, recall the details of a nighttime incident... Read A Few Good Men Summary
Affluenza seeks to diagnose and treat the disease of overconsumption that its three authors, John de Graaf, David Wann and Thomas H. Naylor, believe to be a serious threat to both the human species and the rest of the planet. Accordingly, the book is divided into three main parts: a discussion of the symptoms of affluenza, an analysis of its causes, and suggestions for some possible cures.In Part 1, the authors offer a broad overview... Read Affluenza Summary
Michael McGerr’s 2003 nonfiction book, A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America, 1870-1920, is titled after a phenomenon President Theodore Roosevelt observed in the early 20th century. The book’s epigraph quotes President Roosevelt in 1906: So far as this movement of agitation throughout the country takes the form of a fierce discontent with evil, of a firm determination to punish the authors of evil, whether in industry or politics... Read A Fierce Discontent Summary
An influential work of moral philosophy, After Virtue (1981) by the Scottish-born philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre takes a bleak view of the state of modern moral dialogue, viewing it as suffering from a lack of rational thought and an inability to resolve disagreements. By looking at older forms of moral discourse, such as Aristotle’s moral framework, and comparing them to the modern version, he generally finds the modern moral framework to be lacking and suggests fixes... Read After Virtue Summary
A Game of Thrones is a 1996 epic fantasy novel by George R. R. Martin and is the first in his long-running A Song of Ice and Fire series. The novel introduces the audience to the fictional world of Westeros, where characters become embroiled in a complicated web of plots, conspiracies, and betrayals as they pursue power. A Game of Thrones won numerous awards on publication and was adapted for television in 2011. This guide... Read A Game of Thrones Summary
A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet (2017) is a nonfiction book written by Raj Patel, a political economist and professor at the University of Texas at Austin, and Jason W. Moore, an environmental historian and associate professor at Binghamton University. The authors’ expertise in political economy and environmental history provides a unique perspective on the interconnected nature of capitalism and ecological... Read A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things Summary
Alexander Hamilton is a 2004 biography of Alexander Hamilton, written by Ron Chernow. Beginning with Hamilton’s birth in the Caribbean, the book traces Hamilton’s story from his childhood, to his early years in America, to his rise as one of the most admired—and reviled—politicians and statesmen that the country would ever see. The popular music Hamilton is based on the story told in Chernow’s book, and shows the development of both America, and one of its... Read Alexander Hamilton Summary
Plato’s Republic takes the form of a series of dialogues between the first-person narrator (Socrates, Plato's teacher) and various real-life figures. “The Allegory of the Cave,” perhaps the most well-known section of The Republic, takes place as a conversation between Socrates and Plato’s brother, Glaucon. In this section, Socrates attempts to illustrate a point about how one can gain knowledge and wisdom and “perceive [...] the Essential Form of Goodness” (paragraph 31, line 10), via... Read Allegory Of The Cave Summary
All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren is a fictional political novel originally published in 1946 by Harcourt Brace & Company. Robert Penn Warren was an acclaimed novelist and poet from the American South. Along with fellow Southerners Cleanth Brooks and John Crowe Ransom, he was a leading proponent of the literary critical approach known as New Criticism. His best-known novel, All the King’s Men follows the political rise and fall of Governor Willie... Read All the King's Men Summary
All the President’s Men (1974) is the story of the most famous American political scandal of the 20th century. Written by Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, the book follows in exacting detail their investigation into the Watergate Hotel break-in and subsequent coverup of that crime. The case began with a story on an unusual burglary attempt at the Democratic National Headquarters in the summer of 1972. It eventually evolved into an investigation... Read All the President's Men Summary
A Magnificent Catastrophe: The Tumultuous Election of 1800, America's First Presidential Campaign, written by Edward A. Larson and published in 2007, documents the US presidential election of 1800, a highly-contested political drama, preceded by what is considered the first political campaign in American history. The front-runners in the contest were widely considered to be the then-current President John Adams and Vice President Thomas Jefferson. Although the two men were serving together in the Executive branch... Read A Magnificent Catastrophe Summary
A Man of the People is a 1966 novel by Chinua Achebe. Achebe, a Nigerian novelist and well-known figure of African literature, also wrote Things Fall Apart (1958) and Arrow of God (1964). A Man of the People chronicles political unrest in an African nation that only recently gained its independence from Britain. The novel opens with the narrator, Odili Samalu, awaiting the arrival of Minister Nanga, also known as Chief Nanga, at Anata Grammar... Read A Man of the People Summary
American Creation is a 2007 nonfiction book by Joseph Ellis that covers the successes and failures of the founders of the United States from 1775 to 1803. Ellis starts with the year and three months that set in motion the colonies’ declaration of independence and subsequent revolution. In this eventful year, the British played the worst possible hand they could, removing the possibility of reconciliation. The colonists included fiery and impetuous rebels such as Patrick... Read American Creation Summary
American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House is a Pulitzer Prize–winning biography of President Andrew Jackson written in 2008 by historian Jon Meacham. The book focuses on Jackson’s transformative and often controversial time in the White House, exploring themes of democracy, the Expansion of Executive Power, leadership, and the interaction of the personal and public, including the Impact of Personal Character on Public Duty and the Intersection of Private Lives and Public Roles. Meacham... Read American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House Summary
Colin Woodard’s 2011 book, American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America takes a fascinating look at American regionalism and the 11 territories that continue to shape North America. Woodard asserts that North America comprises 11 distinct nations, each containing its own unique history. Taking readers on a journey that reveals the origins of our fractured continent, Woodard offers a revelatory perspective on American identity and the ways the conflicts... Read American Nations Summary
American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence (1997) is a nonfiction history by Pauline Maier (1938-2013), a historian specializing in the American Revolution. A revisionist historian, Maier uses narrative techniques to bring to life the era in which the Declaration of Independence was created, seeking to demystify this foundational American document and to raise questions about how history is constructed. American Scripture was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1997. This study... Read American Scripture Summary