Winner of the 1998 Pulitzer, Guns, Germs, and Steel attempts to answer why human history unfolded differently on different continents. Drawing on evidence from a diverse range of disciplines, Diamond argues that the varying rates of human development over the past 13,000 years have had little to do with genetic superiority.

MacLeod's 1987 work, ground-breaking for the way it combines field research with theory, follows the lives of two groups of young men from a low-income housing project in the Boston area to show how poor people who aspire to live the American Dream face many more obstacles than their middle-class counterparts.

In His book Gender and the Politics of History (1998), Scott draws attention to the fact that despite gender equality's long-term recognition there has been no genuinely revolutionary change unlike economic, social, and class inequalities.

Written amid the political fallout and 'war on terror' following the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York-Dabashi's adopted city-in 2001, Iran: A People Interrupted offers an insider's insight into the Iranian psyche.

Classical economics suggests that market economies are self-correcting in times of recession or depression, and tend toward full employment and output. But English economist John Maynard Keynes disagrees. In his ground-breaking 1936 study The General Theory, Keynes argues that traditional economics has misunderstood the causes of unemployment.

Managing change in a rapidly shifting economy and an era of increased globalization requires strong leadership-and a practical step-by-step approach. Distilling wisdom from years of coaching organizations, Kotter, a professor at Harvard Business School, identifies eight common mistakes that managers make when implementing change.

Rawls' 1971 text links the idea of social justice to a basic sense of fairness that recognizes human rights and freedoms. Controversially, though, it also accepts differences in the distribution of goods and services-as long as they benefit the worst-off in society.

One of the most significant works of political philosophy, John Stuart Mill's On Liberty (1859) defines and defends individual liberty, a cornerstone of classical liberal thinking.