Books on Culture & Ideas
Thirty books that explain how cultures work and how ideas travel: history, anthropology, society and the essays that shaped cultural criticism.
30 books
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1
HistorySapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
A sweeping account of how cognition, farming, money and empire shaped our species.
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2
HistoryGuns, Germs, and Steel
Argues that geography and environment, rather than culture or race, explain why some societies came to dominate.
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3
EssaysOrientalism
The landmark critique of how Western scholarship and art imagined and represented the East.
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4History
The Silk Roads: A New History of the World
Retells world history from the trade routes that linked East and West.
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5
HistoryCivilisation: A Personal View
The companion to the BBC series tracing Western art and ideas from the Dark Ages to the 20th century.
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6
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7
EssaysMythologies
Short, witty essays decoding wrestling, wine, cars and other myths of everyday French life.
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8
PhilosophyThe Society of the Spectacle
A radical critique of a society in which images and consumption replace lived experience.
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9Society
Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste
A study of how taste in art, food and music marks social class.
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10
SocietyThe Uses of Literacy
A pioneering portrait of working-class life and the impact of mass entertainment in Britain.
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11
EssaysCulture and Society 1780–1950
Traces how the idea of culture developed in English thought from the Industrial Revolution onwards.
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12
AnthropologyThe Golden Bough
A vast comparative study of myth, magic and religion that influenced modernist writers.
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13
AnthropologyPatterns of Culture
A founding work of cultural anthropology comparing the values of three societies.
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14
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15
AnthropologyTristes Tropiques
Part memoir, part anthropology, recalling fieldwork among the peoples of the Brazilian interior.
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16
AnthropologyThe Hero with a Thousand Faces
Identifies the shared hero’s journey behind myths from around the world.
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17
HistoryA History of the World in 100 Objects
The British Museum’s former director tells human history through objects in its collection.
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18History
The Swerve: How the World Became Modern
How the rediscovery of an ancient Roman poem helped spark the Renaissance.
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19
HistoryThe Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy
The classic 19th-century portrait of Renaissance Italy and the birth of the individual.
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20
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21History
The Autumn of the Middle Ages
A vivid evocation of life, thought and art in 14th- and 15th-century France and the Low Countries.
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22
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23
SocietyThe Medium Is the Massage
An illustrated, playful manifesto on how media reshape the way we think.
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24
EssaysAgainst Interpretation
Essays including “Notes on Camp” that set the terms for modern cultural criticism.
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25Anthropology
Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes
A classic retelling of the Greek, Roman and Norse myths.
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26
SocietyThe Culture Map
A practical guide to how national cultures differ in communicating, leading and trusting.
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27
SocietyThe Geography of Thought
Explores how East Asians and Westerners think differently, and why.
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28History
SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome
A lively history of ancient Rome from its origins to the third century AD.
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30
No books match those filters.