Great Books
Reflections on the Revolution in France
Written in 1790, when almost everyone in England still thought the French Revolution was good news. Burke saw what was coming, and said so in a fury.
Federalist Papers
Eighty-five newspaper essays written at speed to win a single state's vote. They are now the closest thing America has to a philosophy of its own constitution.
The Wealth of Nations
Everyone quotes the invisible hand. It appears once in a thousand pages, and Adam Smith is not saying what you have been told he said.
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
In October 1764 an Englishman sat musing among the ruins of Rome and asked how the most durable thing human beings had ever built came apart. The answer became the...
Common Sense
Forty-odd pages by a failed corset-maker who had been in America barely a year. Within three months, a colonial protest had become a revolution.
Social Contract
A hundred and fifty pages that were burned in two cities within months of publication, and are still the most dangerous book in political philosophy.