Some people imagine that nationhood is as old as civilization itself, but Anderson argues that "nation" and "nationalism" are products of the communication technologies of the modern age. With the invention and spread of printing, local languages gradually replaced Latin as the language of print.

In 1963's The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan challenged the vision 1950s America had of itself as a nation of happy housewives and contented families.

Our Common Future, produced in 1987 by a United Nations commission, responded to a growing number of environmental concerns faced by the global community.

The Sociological Imagination provoked hostile reaction when it appeared for its hard-hitting attack on how sociology was practiced, and on several leading sociologists.

One of the most reprinted articles in the history of the Harvard Business Review, "The Core Competence of the Corporation" challenged and redefined traditional concepts of management strategy in an increasingly global and competitive market. Prahalad and Hamel base their 1990 argument on a comparison of case studies.

C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity is a perfect example of one of the most effective aspects of critical thinking skills: the use of reasoning to build a strong, logical argument.

C.S. Lewis's 1943 The Abolition of Man is subtitled 'Reflections on Education With Special Reference to the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of Schools.'

When Manias, Panics, and Crashes was published (1978), the world was entering a new period of global economic turbulence. Economists based their analyses on the assumption that investors act rationally and often communicated their ideas with dry, technical language.

Structural Anthropology (1958) not only transformed the discipline of anthropology, it also energized a movement called structuralism that came to dominate the humanities and social sciences for a generation.

Slavery had been accepted in Western culture for centuries. So why did a movement suddenly rise up in the industrial era calling for its abolition? Could it be that people had suddenly become more enlightened and humanitarian? Or were there other, more compelling and perhaps self-serving reasons for this sudden about-turn?