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First published in 1978, Palestinian American historian Hanna Batatu's The Old Social Classes is considered to be the definitive social history of 20th century Iraq. Tom Nieuwenhuis, a scholar specializing in the region, called it "the best, most detailed modern history of any Arab country," while an entire conference was held in 1989 to discuss its implications.

In the 1960s, researchers into human memory began to understand memory as operating under two systems. The first was a short-term system handling information for mere seconds. The second was a long-term system capable of managing information indefinitely. They also discovered, however, that short-term memory was not simply a filing cabinet, but was actively working on cognitive - or mental - tasks. This is how the phrase "working memory" developed.

In his 1966 book, The Night Battles, Italian historian Carlo Ginzburg detailed the lives of peasant people who were marginalized in their own society and have been all but forgotten in ours. He created a new school of study, microhistory, which has influenced thinkers from a range of different disciplines. The Night Battles looks at the witch trials of a small group of peasants in 16th-century Italy who believed they turned into animals at night to ward off evil spirits and safeguard their crops.

Published in 1974, Roll Jordan, Roll is American historian Eugene Genovese's epic study of slavery in the United States in the late 18th and 19th centuries. It provides a nuanced understanding of the relationship between master and slave. Slave owners saw it as their duty to limit slaves' freedoms for their own good, as a father might deal with his children. But Genovese looked beyond this notion of paternalism to suggest the relationship was more complex.

What is the past - and what can we really know about it? This is the big question that 20th-century French historian Lucien Febvre works his way through in 1942's The Problem of Unbelief. Relying on his own innovative technique championing "problem-based history", Febvre focuses specifically on 16th-century French writer François Rabelais to answer one controversial question: Was Rabelais, as historians had always agreed, really one of his country's first atheists?

How do we know what knowledge is? In his 1963 article, "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?", American philosopher Edmund Gettier radically challenged the accepted definition of knowledge itself. Greek philosopher Plato, discussing knowledge well over 2,000 years ago, defined it as "justified true belief". But in two ingenious cases, Gettier demonstrates that somebody's justified belief can be true because of nothing more than luck.

More than two centuries after its initial publication in 1781, Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason remains perhaps the most influential text in modern philosophy. Kant himself claimed his work as a revolutionary document and insisted that it changed the discipline of philosophy as thoroughly as Copernicus had changed astronomy 300 years earlier, when he said the Earth revolved around the sun and not the other way round.

What really happened when the world's two greatest superpowers went head to head during the Cold War? We Now Know is a major reappraisal of the struggle for political and ideological supremacy between the United States and the Soviet Union from 1945 to the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

Why has gender inequality persisted for so long without revolutionary change? That's the central question Joan Wallach Scott poses in her 1998 collection of essays, Gender and the Politics of History. Scott notes that obvious economic, social, and class inequalities have produced large-scale social change, but uncovering the reality of gender inequality has not done the same.

J. A. (John) Hobson's 1902 book, Imperialism: A Study, presents an original and controversial interpretation of the forces that motivated Britain to conquer foreign lands in the 18th century. Hobson advances the idea that ultrawealthy financiers consciously worked to manipulate political leaders, all so they could invest money and sell goods in the outposts of a country's empire.

Nigerian novelist and professor Chinua Achebe was acutely conscious that Western views of Africa were inevitably the views of a culture that assumed itself superior. When confronted by what it took to be an inferior culture, the West identified itself as better - materially, intellectually, even spiritually. Achebe believed that even as original and subtle a work as Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness - a novel seen by many as a criticism of colonialism and one that Achebe admired stylistically - reflected these assumptions.

In Citizen and Subject, Ugandan academic and author Mahmood Mamdani challenges dominant views about the crisis of postcolonial Africa. Many studies emphasize that the problems the continent faces are homegrown - the consequence of poor government, widespread corruption, and other local factors. Citizen and Subject challenged these ideas. It argues that the current crisis has come about because of the institutional legacy of colonialism.

This is a book for anyone who wants to understand exactly what we mean by ethics and morality today. One of the most vital and controversial works in the 20th-century world of moral philosophy, Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue examines how we think about, talk about, and act out our moral views in the modern world. Finding that the ways in which we engage in our moral reasoning have no common standard of judgment, MacIntyre's 1981 book challenges many contemporary theories of morals.

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.

Though written around 1513, more than 500 years ago, Italian diplomat Niccolò Machiavelli's The Prince is still both widely listened to and very influential. Listeners turn to it for its direct advice on the question of how to attain - and retain - power. Machiavelli's answer, in brief: Use any means necessary to make sure the state survives.

Nineteenth-century American politician John C. Calhoun was unashamedly pro-slavery. So it may seem odd that A Disquisition on Government (1850), written in part to protect that practice, is so respected today. But South Carolina-born Calhoun was undoubtedly a great political thinker. Calhoun - who served his country as senator, vice president, secretary of war, and secretary of state - believed that "majority rule" inevitably led to abuse of power.

Defining liberty as freedom from interference by state power or popular moral opinion, Mill justifies the individual's right to this liberty by focusing on the role self-development plays in human well-being. His vision of individual rights extends to include freedom of thought and emotion and the freedom to act together with others. Society should protect the development of individuality to aid both social progress and innovation.

The ideas set out by American international relations expert Robert O. Keohane in 1984's After Hegemony have had a huge impact on policy debates over the last three decades, both in political circles and in academia. Hegemony means the social, cultural, ideological or economic influence of one dominant group. Contemplating a post-Cold War world half a decade before the Berlin Wall fell, Keohane asks if international cooperation can survive in the absence of a single superpower.

One of the most influential works of political theory ever written, The Federalist Papers collects 85 essays from 1787 and 1788, when the United States was a new country looking to find its way politically. Thomas Jefferson, author of the country's Declaration of Independence and a future US president, called the work "the best commentary on the principles of government which ever was written".

History of the Peloponnesian War was the first major work of political inquiry that did not relate events to divine influences. It introduced instead a critical method of looking to the facts of human actions as the basis of our understanding - a method that continues to be used today, more than two millennia later. Many of the most important political thinkers in the Western tradition cite Thucydides as an influence, and major figures including Thomas Hobbes, David Hume, and Friedrich Nietzsche have praised his writing.