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Philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft's 1792 work A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is a key text in the development of what we now know as feminism. Written in the atmosphere created by the French Revolution, which made radical change seem possible, Wollstonecraft's work challenges the idea that society's oppression of women is entirely natural. While her male contemporaries happily argued for the fundamental freedoms of all men, few were interested in extending these revolutionary rights to women.

London-born, Cambridge-trained historian Tony Judt explains how postwar European history reflects the drawn-out consequences of World War II - beginning with Nazi Germany's surrender in 1945 and ending with the collapse of the Soviet Union (1989-91). No historian before had written in such detail about recent European history, using those two events as bookends. Nor had anyone gone to such lengths to argue that Eastern and Western Europe - large nations and small - had a key characteristic in common.

African American novelist, anthropologist, and essayist Zora Neale Hurston explains how expression in African American arts and culture in the early 20th century departed from the art of white America. Using material collected on anthropological expeditions to the South, Hurston describes a creative process that is alive, ever changing, and largely improvisational. At the time African American art was often criticized for being unoriginal and for copying white culture.

What might society look like if we were brave enough to emerge fully from the shadow of the Christian God? The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche explores this intriguing question in his 1886 work, Beyond Good and Evil. Going further, Nietzsche then asks of his "philosophers of the future" that they take on the challenge of supplying humanity with new ideals to live by.

Even as recently as the 1920s the historical lack of great female writers was often considered as evidence of women's inferiority. Virginia Woolf disagreed. In her 1929 essay A Room of One's Own, she argues that creativity is impossible without privacy and freedom from financial worries - and that throughout history women have had neither. As a result, no tradition of great female writing existed to inspire women. Woolf's focus on the everyday suppression of women was a turning point.

In the century before the Black Death swept across the developed world, economic relations flourished between Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Before European Hegemony looks at this period. Without any dominant power, the world's economy revolved around eight interlocking sub-systems, with the major world cities and towns playing a crucial role in the system as a whole. But as economic activity spread across borders, so did the Black Death.

Before Bernard Bailyn published The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution in 1967, it was generally believed that the Revolution was driven both by social conflict between colonial settlers and the ruling British government, and by differences between classes in American society. Bailyn had a different view. He said that it was radical ideas that fired the American Revolution, and that the Revolution was above all else an ideological, constitutional, and political struggle.

C. S. Lewis may be most famous for his fiction, including children's books like the Chronicles of Narnia series. But in his 1952 book Mere Christianity - originally printed as three separate pamphlets in 1942, 1943, and 1944 - this eclectic and learned man documents his complex journey from atheism to faith.

American sociologist and priest Jay MacLeod's 1987 work Ain't No Makin' It is groundbreaking for the novel way it combines field research with theory. The book follows the lives of two groups of young men from a low-income housing project in the greater Boston area. In it, MacLeod shows how poor people who aspire to live the American dream face many more obstacles than their middle-class counterparts.

Do we need the rules of religion in order to be good people? The German philosopher Immanuel Kant tackles this question in his 1793 text Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason. More than 200 years later, it is still a key text in the shaping of Western religious thought, as well as Kant's most direct discussion of religious themes. Kant tries to look at religious practices in relation to the Enlightenment movement and its firmly held beliefs in the power of reason and personal liberty.

David Hume's book tackling the subject of belief in God is among the most influential in Western philosophy. Published in 1779, three years after Hume's death, without featuring the author's name, the book was deeply controversial in its day. It is now considered a masterpiece and Hume is regarded as one of the greatest philosophers writing in English.

Environmental factors shape our history just as much as - and sometimes more than - human factors. That's the premise of Alfred W. Crosby's 1972 work The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492, a key text in environmental history.

In his 1986 book War Without Mercy, American historian John Dower examines Japanese-American relations during World War II and investigates links between popular culture, stereotypes, and extreme violence. He argues that it was the concept of racism - used equally by both sides - that underpinned the military conflict and led to a particularly brutal war in the Pacific and East Asia.

The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770-1823 offers a thorough account of the emergence of the antislavery movement in Britain and the United States. But what makes the work unique is the way it explores and unpicks the complex relationships between changes in our understanding of what is moral, the impact of political action, and its effect on social change.

In his 1966 book, The Night Battles, Italian historian Carlo Ginzburg detailed the lives of peasant people who were marginalized in their own society and have been all but forgotten in ours. He created a new school of study, microhistory, which has influenced thinkers from a range of different disciplines. The Night Battles looks at the witch trials of a small group of peasants in 16th-century Italy who believed they turned into animals at night to ward off evil spirits and safeguard their crops.

What is the past - and what can we really know about it? This is the big question that 20th-century French historian Lucien Febvre works his way through in 1942's The Problem of Unbelief. Relying on his own innovative technique championing "problem-based history", Febvre focuses specifically on 16th-century French writer François Rabelais to answer one controversial question: Was Rabelais, as historians had always agreed, really one of his country's first atheists?

How many books can claim to be so influential as to inspire the development of a whole school of thought? The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle's Metaphysics did exactly that, laying the foundations for a new branch of philosophy - metaphysics - concerned with the cause and nature of being.

Why has gender inequality persisted for so long without revolutionary change? That's the central question Joan Wallach Scott poses in her 1998 collection of essays, Gender and the Politics of History. Scott notes that obvious economic, social, and class inequalities have produced large-scale social change, but uncovering the reality of gender inequality has not done the same.

Written more than 2,000 years ago, this earliest surviving work on how to wage war successfully - and above all, rationally - argues that winning requires careful advance planning, better sources of information than your opponent, and a strategy that's flexible enough to adapt to changing conditions. Sun Tzu concludes that in the end, a decision not to take military action can be every bit as sensible and effective as being able to triumph on the battlefield.

Politics is one of the first books ever to investigate the concept of political philosophy. Written by the famous Greek thinker Aristotle in the fourth century BCE, it focuses on trying to understand how best to create political communities that support, serve, and improve their citizens. Aristotle investigates a number of different areas before drawing conclusions. These include an examination of existing regimes to see which are best, a look at political theories, and even an exploration of the systems of education.