The Macat Library: Great Works for Critical Thinking
About the Book Series
Making the ideas of the world’s great thinkers accessible, affordable, and comprehensible to everybody, everywhere.
With a growing list of over 180 titles across a broad range of subject areas, Macat works with leading academics from the world’s top universities to produce new analyses that focus on the ideas and the impact of the most influential works ever written. By setting them in context – and looking at the influences that shaped their authors, as well as the responses they provoked – Macat encourages readers to look at these classics and game-changers with fresh eyes.
An Analysis of Jacques Derrida's Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences
1st Edition
By Tim Smith-Laing
May 10, 2018
Jacques Derrida’s Structure, Sign, and Play is one of the most controversial and influential philosophical texts of the 20th century. Delivered at a conference on structuralism at Johns Hopkins, the lecture took aim at the critical and philosophical fashions of the time and radically proposing a ...
An Analysis of James Surowiecki's The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many are Smarter than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economics, Societies, and Nations
1st Edition
By Nikki Springer
May 10, 2018
In The Wisdom of Crowds, New Yorker columnist, Surowiecki, explores the question of whether the many are better than an elite few – no matter their qualifications – at solving problems, promoting innovation and making wise decisions. Surowiecki’s text uses multiple case studies and touches on the ...
An Analysis of Martin Buber's I and Thou
1st Edition
By Simon Ravenscroft
May 10, 2018
Martin Buber’s I and Thou argues that humans engage with the world in two ways. One is with the attitude of an ‘I’ towards an ‘It’, where the self stands apart from objects as items of experience or use. The other is with the attitude of an ‘I’ towards a ‘Thou’, where the self enters into real ...
An Analysis of N.T. Wright's The New Testament and the People of God
1st Edition
By Benjamin Laird
May 10, 2018
Wright’s The New Testament and the People of God is the first volume of his acclaimed series ‘Christian Origins and the Question of God’ comprehensively addressing the historical and theological questions surrounding the origins of Christianity. The text outlines Wright's hermeneutical theory and ...
An Analysis of Erwin Panofsky's Meaning in the Visual Arts
1st Edition
By Emmanouil Kalkanis
May 02, 2018
Erwin Panofsky’s Meaning in the Visual Arts is considered a key work in art history. Its ideas have provoked widespread debate, and although it was first published more than sixty years ago, it continues to feature regularly on numerous university reading lists. Meaning in the Visual Arts ...
An Analysis of Friedrich Schleiermacher's On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers
1st Edition
By Ruth Jackson
May 02, 2018
On Religion is a major text for the development of modern religious thought in the West and its author, German theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher, is remembered as the Father of Modern Protestant Theology, as well as for his contributions to philosophy, ethics and hermeneutics. Comprising five ...
An Analysis of Michel Foucault's What is an Author?
1st Edition
By Tim Smith-Laing
May 02, 2018
Michel Foucault’s 1969 essay “What is an Author?” sidesteps the stormy arguments surrounding “intentional fallacy” and the “death of the author,” offering an entirely different way of looking at texts. Foucault points out that all texts are written but not all are discussed as having “authors”. So ...
An Analysis of Moses Maimonides's Guide for the Perplexed
1st Edition
By Mark Scarlata
May 02, 2018
Written by the great medieval Jewish philosopher Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed attempts to explain the perplexities of biblical language—and apparent inconsistencies in the text—in the light of philosophy and scientific reason. Composed as a letter to a student, The Guide aims to ...
An Analysis of Roland Barthes's The Death of the Author
1st Edition
By Laura Seymour
May 02, 2018
Roland Barthes’s 1967 essay, "The Death of the Author," argues against the traditional practice of incorporating the intentions and biographical context of an author into textual interpretation because of the resultant limitations imposed on a text. Hailing "the birth of the reader," Barthes posits...
An Analysis of Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar's The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination
1st Edition
By Rebecca Pohl
May 02, 2018
The 1979 publication of Susan Gubar and Sandra M. Gilbert’s ground-breaking study The Madwoman in the Attic marked a founding moment in feminist literary history as much as feminist literary theory. In their extensive study of nineteenth-century women’s writing, Gubar and Gilbert offer radical ...
An Analysis of Seyla Benhabib's The Rights of Others: Aliens, Residents and Citizens
1st Edition
By Burcu Ozcelik
May 02, 2018
In The Rights of Others, Benhabib argues that the transnational movement of people across the globe has brought to the fore fundamental dilemmas facing liberal democracies: tension between a state’s commitment to universal human rights, and to its sovereign self-determination and its claims to ...
An Analysis of Sir Philip Sidney's The Defence of Poesy
1st Edition
By Liam Haydon
May 02, 2018
The Defence of Poesy is the first major piece of literary criticism in English. Taking aim at classical authors who disparaged poetry, and contemporary critics who saw literature as a corrupting influence, Sidney foregrounds the moral force of poetry. Sidney considers the real life affects of ...