The Post-American World is a 2008 book by television journalist and commentator Fareed Zakaria. Its main thesis revolves around the multi-century dominance of Western powers, chiefly represented by the United States for most of the 20th century and into the 21st, and the idea of American Power in a Post-Hegemonic World. Zakaria argues that it is coming to an end and that non-Western powers—most notably China and India but also including South Africa, Indonesia, and... Read The Post-American World Summary

In The Power Elite, C. Wright Mills argues that power is exercised through the dominant institutions in American society, specifically corporations, the military, and the executive branch of the national government. Those holding the top positions in these institutions make the consequential decisions and do so without democratic accountability in the US in the mid-20th century. Mills held a Ph.D. in sociology and was a sociology professor at Columbia University. Originally published in 1956, this... Read The Power Elite Summary

Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business investigates the science behind habit formation in the human brain. Drawing on corporate case studies and pioneering scientific experiments, Duhigg analyzes how individuals, organizations, and societies can use the knowledge of habit formation to change their behaviors. Published in 2012 by Random House, the nonfiction book has reached a broad public readership and landed on the New York Times... Read The Power of Habit Summary

The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell with Bill Moyers, published in 1988, is a nonfiction companion to a six-episode PBS documentary series by the same name. The main text of the book is a transcript of an extensive conversation between comparative mythology expert Joseph Campbell and journalist Bill Moyers. Using mythological stories, psychoanalytic theories, and personal anecdotes, Campbell and Moyers examine how world mythologies illuminate the mysteries of human life through shared symbols as... Read The Power of Myth Summary

The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward by Daniel H. Pink was published in 2022. It challenges the popular mantra “No regrets” that has dominated Western culture. The book claims that toxic positivity can stymie personal growth and one’s potential to achieve a better life. It is, in essence, an antithesis to popular self-help books that champion blind positivity over conscious consideration of regrets. Pink argues that by embracing the feeling of... Read The Power of Regret Summary

The Premonition: A Pandemic Story is a 2021 nonfiction book by Michael Lewis about an unlikely group of freethinking pandemic researchers whose work puts them at odds with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Trump administration. Their stories unfold against the backdrop of the poor US response to the threat of COVID-19.Lewis explains in the book’s Introduction that in his 2018 novel, The Fifth Risk, he wondered what would happen if... Read The Premonition Summary

The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life is a sociological study of the ways individuals encounter each other. Published in 1956 by Erving Goffman, it focuses on the relationship between an individual carrying out a particular role in society (what Goffman calls a “performance”) and those who are present but not participant (whom he calls “observers”) in the activity. While the text begins with a general introduction to Goffman’s methodology, with Chapter 1 solely an... Read The Presentation Of Self In Everyday Life Summary

In 2007 the United States experienced an economic downturn that caused the standard for living for millions of Americans to plummet. While the share of national income dropped for 99 percent of Americans, the top 1 percent of Americans saw their wealth increase, in some cases considerably. Joseph E. Stiglitz published The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers Our Future in 2012 to explain this income gap and offer some hope that it... Read The Price of Inequality Summary

Anthony Abraham Jack’s 2019 nonfiction book The Privileged Poor: How Elite Colleges are Failing Disadvantaged Students is based on sociological research the author conducted between 2013 and 2016 on the campus of an unnamed elite Northeastern university. There, he observed events on campus while also conducting interviews with 76 undergraduates from underprivileged backgrounds and 27 Black students from middle-class or upper-income families in order to find out how social class impacts students’ adjustment to college... Read The Privileged Poor Summary

The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism is a book written by German historian and sociologist Max Weber in 1905. Weber is often considered to be one of the founders of the discipline of sociology, and The Protestant Ethic is one of his most famous texts. As a work of sociology, the book seeks to analyze broad changes in both the economic and the religious structures of Western European and American societies. Over the... Read The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism Summary

The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry (2011) is a work of nonfiction and investigative journalism by British-American author Jon Ronson. The book begins when Ronson is drawn into a mystery involving a cryptic book sent anonymously to academics, sparking an inquiry into the nature of “madness.” His journey leads him to question whether society is shaped more by the irrationality of a few powerful individuals than by the reason of the many... Read The Psychopath Test Summary

The Racial Contract, published in 1997 by Cornell University Press, is a seminal text from moral and political philosopher Charles Mills (1950-2021). In the text, he argues that the truth of the original social contract is the Racial Contract, an agreement between European/white men to establish a white supremacist polity characterized by the subordination and exploitation of non-European/nonwhite people on global, national, local, and micro levels of society. He discusses historical evidence that the series... Read The Racial Contract Summary

Brian Goldstone’s There Is No Place for Us (2025) is a work of narrative nonfiction that documents the intersecting lives of five working-class Black families struggling to find secure housing in modern Atlanta, Georgia. Through immersive, multiyear reporting, the book follows single mothers and couples as they navigate a landscape of soaring rents, extended-stay motels, and systemic barriers that push them into being unhoused despite their full-time employment. The book explores several themes, including The... Read There Is No Place for Us Summary

As World War II raged around him, F.A. Hayek wrote and published The Road to Serfdom, which became a touchstone of the campaign to preserve personal and economic freedoms. The book argues that Western democracies’ attraction to socialism will take them down a path to authoritarian dictatorships like those in Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany. Government planning of economies, Hayek declares, must result in arbitrary and unfair edicts, as well as a loss of individual... Read The Road To Serfdom Summary

The Road to Wigan Pier is a 1937 nonfiction book by George Orwell. The book describes Orwell’s firsthand experiences of life in Great Britain’s working-class communities in the early 20th century and advocates for the adoption of socialism. SummaryThe Road to Wigan Pier begins in a small lodging house in Northern England. The impoverished, rundown house rents crowded rooms to people who work in the nearby mines. The landlord, Mr. Brooker, was once a miner... Read The Road to Wigan Pier Summary

In 2019, David Brooks, author of The Road to Character and The Social Animal, published The Second Mountain, a book on community, virtue, and the committed life. A mix of self-help, advice, personal experience, and sociological data, The Second Mountain aims to present a systematic approach to a life dedicated to self-improvement through self-transcendence. Specifically, Brooks argues that there are four main avenues through which this approach to life should be accessed and adequately integrated:... Read The Second Mountain Summary

The Second Sex was written by Simone de Beauvoir and published in 1949. The book is divided into two volumes: Facts and Myths and Lived Experience. When it was released, The Second Sex was not considered a work of historical, literary, and social analysis, rather than a work of philosophy. Moreover, Beauvoir did not identify as a philosopher. Nevertheless, the book became known as a major work of feminist philosophy, and today Beauvoir is widely... Read The Second Sex Summary

The Sexual Contract, published in 1988 by Polity Press, is an examination of social contract theory through a radical feminist lens. While acknowledging that the original contract itself is a political fiction, Carole Pateman claims that the original contract is a sexual-social contract that secures patriarchy and relations of sexually differentiated domination and subordination in modern civil society. However, dominant interpretations repress the sexual contract so that civil society appears to be post- or anti-patriarchal... Read The Sexual Contract Summary

The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains (2011) is a nonfiction book by writer, editor, and media critic Nicholas Carr. Carr is a prolific nonfiction writer known for his analysis of cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and human society. A 2011 Pulitzer Prize Finalist, The Shallows combines elements of personal essay, journalism, and academic research to explore The Impact of the Internet on Cognitive Processes, The Nature of Learning and Media in the... Read The Shallows Summary

Published in 2005, The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America is a nonfiction book by American author and educator Jonathan Kozol. Drawing on more than 40 years of experience teaching elementary school and advocating for education equality, Kozol describes the almost complete racial isolation of many Black and Hispanic students in American public schools. Although 50 years have passed since the Supreme Court’s landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision... Read The Shame of the Nation Summary