From Abraham Lincoln to Nelson Mandela, and from Aristotle to George Orwell, 50 Politics Classics distills the essence of the books, pamphlets, and speeches of the major leaders and great thinkers that drive real-world change.

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• 1 Lord Acton Essays on Freedom and Power (1948)
• 2 Daron Acemoglu & James A. Robinson Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty (2012)
• 3 Saul Alinsky Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals (1971)
• 4 Graham T. Allison & Philip Zelikow Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (1971/1999)
• 5 Norman Angell The Great Illusion: A Study of the Relation of Military Power to National Advantage (1910)
• 6 Hannah Arendt The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951)
• 7 Aristotle Politics (4th century BCE)
• 8 Isaiah Berlin Two Concepts of Liberty (1958)
• 9 Edward Bernays Propaganda (1928)
• 10 Carl Bernstein & Bob Woodward All the President's Men (1974)
• 11 Edmund Burke Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)
• 12 Rachel Carson Silent Spring (1962)
• 13 Winston Churchill The Gathering Storm (1948)
• 14 Carl von Clausewitz On War (1832)
• 15 Francis Fukuyama The End of History and the Last Man (1992)
• 16 Mohandas K. Gandhi An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth (1927–29)
• 17 Emma Goldman Anarchism and Other Essays (1910)
• 18 Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, & James Madison The Federalist Papers (1788)
• 19 F.A. Hayek The Road to Serfdom (1944)
• 20 Thomas Hobbes Leviathan, or the Matter, Forme and Power of a Common Wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil (1651)
• 21 Samuel P. Huntington The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996)
• 22 Paul Kennedy The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (1987)
• 23 Martin Luther King (edited by Clayborne Carson) The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. (1998)
• 24 Naomi Klein No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies (1999)
• 25 Abraham Lincoln The Gettysburg Address (1863)
• 26 John Locke Two Treatises of Government (1689)
• 27 Niccolò Machiavelli Discourses on Livy (1531)
• 28 Nelson Mandela Long Walk to Freedom (1995)
• 29 Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels The Communist Manifesto (1848)
• 30 Mencius The Mencius (3rd century BCE)
• 31 John Micklethwait & Adrian Wooldridge The Fourth Revolution: The Global Race to Reinvent the State (2014)
• 32 John Stuart Mill The Subjection of Women (1869)
• 33 Hans Morgenthau Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace (1948)
• 34 Robert Nozick Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974)
• 35 Joseph S. Nye The Future of Power (2011)
• 36 Mancur Olson The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities (1982)
• 37 George Orwell Animal Farm (1945)
• 38 Thomas Paine Common Sense (1776)
• 39 Plato Crito (4th century BCE)
• 40 Karl Popper The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945)
• 41 Jean-Jacques Rousseau Discourse on the Origins and Basis of Inequality Among Men (1755)
• 42 Upton Sinclair The Jungle (1906)
• 43 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn The Gulag Archipelago, 1918–56 (1974)
• 44 Sun Yat-sen Three Principles of the People (1924)
• 45 Margaret Thatcher The Autobiography (2013)
• 46 Henry David Thoreau Civil Disobedience (1849)
• 47 Alexis de Tocqueville Democracy in America (1835)
• 48 Richard Wilkinson & Kate Pickett The Spirit Level: Why Equality Is Better for Everyone (2009)
• 49 Mary Wollstonecraft A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)
• 50 Fareed Zakaria The Post-American World (2008)
• 50 More Politics Classics
• Credits
• Acknowledgments