Social Analysis

In this groundbreaking work, psychiatrist Dr. Eric Berne introduces a new method for understanding and analyzing human behavior, known as transactional analysis or "TA", which examines the interactions, or "transactions," between individuals and the ways in which they change in response to each other

A former US naval intelligence worker, Milton William Cooper published his manifesto Behold a Pale Horse in 1991. Since then it has gone on to sell hundreds of thousands of copies, becoming the number-one best seller in the American prison system. According to Behold a Pale Horse, JFK was assassinated - because he was about to reveal that extraterrestrials were about to take over the earth - by his driver, an alien himself; AIDS is a government conspiracy; and much more.

Uncover the historical and social roots of caste discrimination in Who Were the Shudras? by Dr. B. R. Ambedkar. This groundbreaking work challenges the traditional narratives of Hindu society, offering a meticulous examination of the origins and status of the Shudra caste. Ambedkar's critical analysis and visionary insights call for a re-evaluation of social hierarchies and advocate for equality and justice.

In Purity and Danger, Mary Douglas identifies the concern for purity as a key theme at the heart of every society. In lively and lucid prose, she explains its relevance for every listeners by revealing its wide-ranging impact on our attitudes to society, values, cosmology and knowledge.

When this book was published in 1921, Elsie Lincoln Benedict's How to Analyze People on Sight was received as a serious scientific work of analytic sociology, but fast forward 90 years and the same words ring hilariously. Apparently well intended at the time, the book appears to invent the very notion of stereotyping.

Bhabha investigates concepts such as "hybridity," the notion that ideas are made up of all the different cultures with which they have contact, and "mimicry," the way in which a person or group adopts an idea from another culture, to express a postcolonial world, where we are all "in between" cultures. These concepts have been important to postcolonial studies, but have also been taken up in such diverse areas as architecture and literature. Although criticized by some for insisting that the written word was as powerful as armed resistance in the struggle against colonizing forces.

Do you want to ask smart questions like Socrates or be an out-of-the-box thinker like John Stuart Mill, and rational like Descartes? These people have at least one thing in common: They were great critical thinkers of their time, and their shared wisdom lived through the centuries. Lessons from Critical Thinkers provides intellectual power to engage with and participate in effective critical thoughts, arguments, debates, reading, and reflection drawn from methods in the history of philosophical cognitive development.

How do those in power exercise that power over a state's citizens? French thinker Michel Foucault's 1975 work Discipline and Punish looks to answer this question by investigating the prison system. Foucault does not believe that the modern-day system developed out of reformers' humanitarian concerns. He argues that prison both created and then became part of a bigger system of surveillance that extends throughout society.

In early 2014, sparked by an assault by their government on peaceful students, Ukrainians rose up against a deeply corrupt, Moscow-backed regime. Initially demonstrating under the banner of EU integration, the Maidan protesters proclaimed their right to a dignified existence; they learned to organize, to act collectively, to become a civil society. Most prominently, they established a new Ukrainian identity: territorial, inclusive, and present-focused with powerful mobilizing symbols.

Sociologist Émile Durkheim's 1897 work On Suicide is a powerful evidence-based study of why people take their own lives. In the late 19th century it was generally accepted that each suicide was an individual phenomenon, caused by such personal factors as grief, loss, and financial problems. But Durkheim felt there were patterns in suicide rates, and believed that a more likely cause of suicide lay in the individual's relationship to society.

Published in 1961, the year of Frantz Fanon's death, The Wretched of the Earth is both a powerful analysis of the psychological effects of colonization and a rallying cry for violent uprising and independence. The book rejects colonial assumptions that the people of colonized countries need to be guided by their European colonizers because they are somehow less evolved or civilized. Fanon argues that violence is justified to purge colonialism not just from the countries themselves, but from the very souls of their inhabitants.

The Science of Reading People isn't a book that tells you about crossed arms, eye contact, and eyerolls. That type of information is so basic, it can be hidden. No, this book is about deep behavioral psychology, and how it affects all of our actions and behaviors.

As a young man, Vince Ellison began his career in the belly of the beast—as a prison guard working in the worst cellblock imaginable. And it was to his dismay and sadness that he has seen that same evil later in life. This time, not in the faces of incarcerated criminals, but rather in the eyes of the leaders of the Democratic party. In this persuasive work, Vince marshals his own experience and couples it with a learned and original analysis to conclude that the leaders of America's "progressive" party aren't just wrong on their policy stances—they are deliberately destructive.

Think smarter, better, and faster. Clear thinking is the key to truth, wisdom, and knowledge. Whether it’s from ourselves or others, we rarely see the world as it really is. We aren’t able to think clearly. We build our beliefs on lies, assumptions, and deceptions. This ends now. Practical methods to never be fooled, stop making mistakes, and avoid traps. The Art of Clear Thinking takes an in-depth look at the everyday illusions we come across, and how to defeat them once and for all.

Linguistic structuralism studies the meaning of language based not just on definitions, but also on the relationships of words and sounds to each other. Lévi-Strauss's insight was to see that this concept of structuralism in linguistics could be applied to anthropology as well. He saw that while some cultures are very different from others, they all seem to have certain internal structural relationships in common. By tracing these structures across cultures, he tried to answer nothing less than the eternal question: "What is man?"

Please note: This is a summary and analysis of the book and not the original book. In The Second Mountain, political commentator and author David Brooks explains how individuals and societies can transition from selfish individualism to a focus on community. He believes that to achieve solidarity, wholeness and true happiness, we must shift our character from the hyper-individualistic first mountain to the more relational second mountain.

Black Music is a book about the brilliant young jazz musicians of the early 1960s: John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Archie Shepp, Sun Ra, and others. It is composed of essays, reviews, interviews, liner notes, musical analyses, and personal impressions from 1959-1967. Also includes Amiri Baraka's reflections in a 2009 interview with Calvin Reid of Publishers Weekly.

Criminal Psychology was published by Hans Gross in 1910, and stands to this day as the definitive manual for applied psychology in the legal field. With this book Gross re-examined the basic assumptions of the legal profession and rebuilt them from the ground up. His approach to psychology is as meticulous as his approach to the field of law, accepting and incorporating only those aspects of psychology which could be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, and applying them in a specific, focused manner.

Are your manifestations taking too long to show up? And are you tired of waiting? Divine timing is a phrase that’s been floating around the spiritual community for quite some time now. It is the idea that everything in the Universe happens at "just the right moment" without you having any control over it. There are many missing links when it comes to law of attraction teachings. And one of the biggest ones is knowing how to close the gap between where you are and where you want to be. And even if you can't see a way out of your current reality, there is one.

Published in 1925, The Gift is one of French sociologist Marcel Mauss's few non-collaborative works. In it, he elevates what might appear to be a simple gift from the status of innocent object to something that has the capacity to motivate people and define social relationships. The Gift analyzes cultures across the world and across time, with the way gifts are given and received working as a guide to understanding the rules and traditions of many different societies.