Works

#224 · 1961 (expanded revision of Seeds of Contemplation, 1949)

Merton's 1955 collection of contemplative essays on Christian life

Seeds of Contemplation (1949) / New Seeds of Contemplation (Mid-late (Merton's mature contemplative theology))

The mature statement of Merton's contemplative spirituality — the false self and the true self, contemplative prayer as participation in the divine life

American Catholic / Trappist monastic spirituality 1

#223 · 1948

The Seven Storey Mountain (Early (Merton's breakthrough book; the spiritual autobiography of his conversion))

A modern Augustine's Confessions — Merton's 1948 narrative of his conversion to Catholicism and entry into the Trappist monastery at Gethsemani

American Catholic contemplative spirituality / social criticism 1

#363 · 1966

Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (Late)

Merton's 1966 mature work — integrating Trappist contemplative depth with social-political engagement

American Catholic Worker movement 1

#626 · 1952

The Long Loneliness (Late)

Dorothy Day

Dorothy Day's 1952 foundational autobiography — the Catholic Worker, voluntary poverty, hospitality, pacifism

American Christian realism / political theology 1

#246 · 1952

The Irony of American History (Late (Niebuhr's major Cold War political-theological book))

#1620 · c. 1943 (earlier versions debated)

The "ironic" structure of American national self-understanding — Niebuhr's 1952 Christian-realist analysis of Cold War American politics

American Christian realism / Protestant devotional / twelve-step tradition 1

The Serenity Prayer (Middle)

Niebuhr's c. 1943 Serenity Prayer — 'God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change'

American Christian realism / Protestant social ethics 1

#245 · 1932

Moral Man and Immoral Society (Early-mid (Niebuhr's breakthrough book that established Christian realism))

#218 · 1963 (collected sermons; some preached at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church Montgomery in the 1950s)

Individual moral capacity vs collective moral failure — Niebuhr's 1932 book that established Christian realism against liberal Protestant optimism

American Civil Rights / black-church preaching 1

Strength to Love (Mid (the major collection of sermons))

Martin Luther King Jr.

King's major book of theological-pastoral preaching — Christian love as the principle of non-violent social transformation

American Civil Rights / black-church theology / non-violent direct-action 1

#1623 · April 16, 1963 (written in jail in response to a published statement by eight Alabama clergymen criticising King's direct-action methods)

Letter from Birmingham Jail (Mid (the canonical theological-political document))

Martin Luther King Jr.

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere" — King's 7,000-word jail-cell letter defending non-violent direct action and the Christian-prophetic foundations of civil rights

American cognitive linguistics / embodied cognition 1

#685 · 1980

Metaphors We Live By (Late)

George Lakoff and Mark Johnson

Lakoff & Johnson's 1980 foundational text — metaphor as constitutive of thought, not mere linguistic decoration

American cognitive science / artificial intelligence 1

#598 · 1979

Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (Mid)

Douglas R. Hofstadter

Hofstadter's 1979 foundational text — strange loops, self-reference, and the emergence of consciousness

American Cold War political rhetoric 1

#308 · June 12, 1987 (delivered at the Brandenburg Gate, West Berlin)

Tear Down This Wall (Late (Reagan presidency at its rhetorical peak))

#315 · 1962 (after Nixon's 1960 presidential defeat to Kennedy)

"Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" — Reagan's June 1987 Berlin Wall speech, the canonical American Cold War demand for the end of Soviet division of Europe

American Cold War political tradition 1

Six Crises (Mid (pre-presidential, post-1960 defeat))

Richard M. Nixon

Nixon's six major political crises — Alger Hiss, the Fund Crisis, Eisenhower's heart attack, the Caracas mob, the Khrushchev "Kitchen Debate," the 1960 election

American communitarianism 1

#462 · 1982 (2nd edn 1998)

Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (Early)

Michael J. Sandel

Sandel's 1982 communitarian critique of Rawlsian liberalism — the "unencumbered self"

American communitarianism / pluralist liberalism 1

#463 · 1983

Spheres of Justice (Mid)

Michael Walzer

Walzer's 1983 pluralist theory of justice — "complex equality" across distinct social spheres

American conservatism 5

#1363 · 1965

Where's the Rest of Me? (Early)

#1364 · 1975-79; 2001 (published)

Reagan's 1965 pre-political memoir

Reagan, In His Own Hand (Mid)

#1365 · 1981-89; 2007 (published)

Reagan's 1975-79 radio scripts

The Reagan Diaries (Late)

Reagan's 1981-89 presidential diaries

#1366 · 1983 (March 8)

Evil Empire Speech (Late)

#307 · October 27, 1964 (broadcast nationally on behalf of Goldwater)

Reagan's 1983 evil-empire speech

#1370 · 1990

In the Arena: A Memoir of Victory, Defeat, and Renewal (Late)

Richard M. Nixon

Nixon's 1990 reflective memoir

American conservatism / Cold War political rhetoric 1

A Time for Choosing (Early (launched Reagan's political career))

"The Speech" — Reagan's 1964 nationally televised address on behalf of Goldwater, the founding document of modern American conservatism's movement politics

American conservatism / Cold War political tradition 1

#1367 · 1978

RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (Late)

Richard M. Nixon

Nixon's 1978 post-presidential memoir

American conservative political tradition 1

#349 · 1990

An American Life (Late)

#460 · 1787-88 (Independent Journal, New York Packet, Daily Advertiser)

Reagan's 1990 presidential memoir — the major retrospective account of his political career

American constitutional liberalism 1

The Federalist Papers (Mid)

Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay

The 85 papers (1787-88) by Hamilton, Madison, and Jay in defense of the proposed US Constitution

American critical feminism / postmodern social theory 1

#500 · 1990

Justice and the Politics of Difference (Mid)

Iris Marion Young

Young's 1990 foundational work on group-based oppression and justice — the "five faces of oppression"

American critical race theory 1

#506 · 1991 (Stanford Law Review)

Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color (Mid)

Kimberlé Crenshaw

Crenshaw's 1991 foundational essay on intersectionality — Black women at the intersection of race and gender

American critical social theory 1

#696 · 1977

The Fall of Public Man (Mid)

Richard Sennett

Sennett's 1977 foundational historical-social analysis — the decline of public life and the tyranny of intimacy

American critical sociology 1

#689 · 1959

The Sociological Imagination (Mid)

C. Wright Mills

Mills's 1959 foundational text — the sociological imagination connects private troubles to public issues

American Democratic Party politics 1

#351 · 2007

Promises to Keep (Mid)

Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Biden's 2007 political memoir before the 2008 presidential campaign

American ecological theology / cosmological-Christian 1

#593 · 1988

The Dream of the Earth (Late)

Thomas Berry

Berry's 1988 foundational text of ecological theology — the "Great Work" of transition to Ecozoic Era

American Enlightenment 1

#617 · 1781-82 (composed); 1785 (Paris edn); 1787 (London edn)

Notes on the State of Virginia (Mid)

Thomas Jefferson

Jefferson's 1785 Notes — foundational text of American Enlightenment political thought

American Enlightenment / Eclectic deism 1

#1135 · 1728

Articles of Belief and Acts of Religion (Early)

#1134 · 1747-1750 (letters), 1751 (first edition)

Young Franklin's 1728 private religious credo — eclectic-deist articles for his own devotional practice

American Enlightenment / Experimental natural philosophy 1

Experiments and Observations on Electricity (Mid)

#1133 · 1732-1758 (annual, twenty-six issues)

Franklin's 1751 collected electrical letters — founding work of American natural science

American Enlightenment / Practical-republican tradition 2

Poor Richard's Almanack (Mid)

#1132 · 1771 (Part 1), 1784 (Part 2), 1788 (Part 3), 1790 (Part 4, unfinished)

Franklin's 1732-58 annual almanac — colonial America's most-read book of practical wisdom and proverbs

Autobiography (Late)

Franklin's 1771-90 unfinished autobiography — founding text of the American self-made-man tradition

American environmental philosophy 2

#591 · 1949 (posthumous)

A Sand County Almanac (Late)

Aldo Leopold

Leopold's 1949 foundational text of the land ethic — "thinking like a mountain"

#590 · 1962

Silent Spring (Late)

Rachel Carson

Carson's 1962 foundational text of the modern environmental movement — pesticides and the threat to ecological web

American evangelical Protestantism / Popular eschatology 1

#1173 · 1983

Approaching Hoofbeats (Mid)

Graham's 1983 apocalyptic-prophetic study — the four horsemen of Revelation as warning to the contemporary world

American evangelical Protestantism / Southern Baptist tradition 3

#1172 · 1977

How to Be Born Again (Mid)

Graham's 1977 evangelistic-pastoral statement — the new-birth doctrine systematically expounded

#1171 · 1997

Just As I Am (Late)

Billy Graham's 1997 autobiography — the life of the twentieth century's most prominent evangelical preacher

#1174 · 2006

The Journey: How to Live by Faith in an Uncertain World (Late)

Graham's 2006 late-life summary of practical-Christian living in an uncertain world

American evangelicalism 1

#345 · 1953

Peace with God (Early-mid)

#623 · 1907 (private printing); 1918 (public)

Graham's 1953 evangelical bestseller — the major popular statement of mid-20th-century American evangelical theology

American feminist science studies 1

#594 · 2003

The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness (Late)

Donna J. Haraway

Haraway's 2003 foundational text on multi-species companionship — dogs and humans as significant others

American generative linguistics 1

#684 · 1957

Syntactic Structures (Early)

Noam Chomsky

Chomsky's 1957 foundational generative linguistics — "colorless green ideas sleep furiously"

American Hegelian political theory 1

#596 · 1992

The End of History and the Last Man (Mid)

Francis Fukuyama

Fukuyama's 1992 controversial post-Cold-War political philosophy — the "end of history" in liberal democracy

American historical-philosophical literature 1

The Education of Henry Adams (Late)

Henry Adams

Henry Adams's 1907/1918 — third-person autobiographical reflection on American education and historical acceleration

American idealism / Harvard pragmatism 1

#405 · 1908

The Philosophy of Loyalty (Late)

Josiah Royce

Royce's 1908 idealist-pragmatist treatise on loyalty as the central ethical category

American left-libertarian socialism / anti-imperialism / political philosophy of US foreign policy 1

#1520 · 1969

American Power and the New Mandarins (Early (political work))

Noam Chomsky

Chomsky's 1969 political debut — the New Mandarins and US conduct in Vietnam

American liberal-Aristotelian capabilities approach 1

#499 · 2006

Frontiers of Justice (Late)

Martha C. Nussbaum

Nussbaum's 2006 application of the capabilities approach to disability, nationality, and species membership

American liberal-Democratic / Evangelical-Protestant political tradition 4

#1269 · 1982

Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President (Mid)

Carter's 1982 presidential memoir of the 1977-81 single term

#1270 · 1996

Living Faith (Late)

Carter's 1996 religious-political reflections

#1272 · 1997

Sources of Strength: Meditations on Scripture for a Living Faith (Late)

Carter's 1997 weekly-meditations book — scriptural reflections from his Plains, GA Sunday-school teaching

#1271 · 2005

Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis (Late)

#1276 · 2004 (July 27, 2004)

Carter's 2005 political-religious critique — proper-American moral-political foundations

American liberal-Democratic tradition 4

2004 Democratic National Convention Keynote Address (Early)

Barack H. Obama

Obama's 2004 DNC keynote — "There's not a liberal America and a conservative America"

#1274 · 2006

The Audacity of Hope (Mid)

Barack H. Obama

Obama's 2006 political-philosophical book — pre-presidential political vision

#1375 · 2017

Promise Me, Dad (Late)

Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Biden's 2017 memoir of his son Beau's 2015 death

#1275 · 2020

A Promised Land (Late)

Barack H. Obama

Obama's 2020 first volume of presidential memoir — 2008 campaign through 2011

American liberal-progressive memoir tradition 1

#1125 · 1937

This Is My Story (Mid)

Eleanor Roosevelt

Roosevelt's 1937 autobiography — childhood and marriage through 1924

American liberal-progressive political tradition 1

#1127 · 1962 (written, unfinished at her death), 1963 (published posthumously)

Tomorrow Is Now (Late)

Eleanor Roosevelt

Roosevelt's posthumous 1963 testament — the unfinished work of American liberal democracy

American liberal-progressive practical-ethical tradition 1

#1126 · 1960

You Learn by Living (Late)

Eleanor Roosevelt

Roosevelt's 1960 practical-philosophical reflections — eleven keys to a more fulfilling life

American libertarianism 1

#461 · 1974

Anarchy, State, and Utopia (Mid)

Robert Nozick

Nozick's 1974 libertarian response to Rawls — the minimal state, entitlement theory of justice

American mainline Protestant Christian realism 1

#186 · 1941 (vol. I, Human Nature); 1943 (vol. II, Human Destiny) — based on the Gifford Lectures, Edinburgh, 1939

The Nature and Destiny of Man (Mid-late (Niebuhr's major systematic work))

Christian anthropology and eschatology against modern optimism — human nature as the paradoxical synthesis of nature and spirit, sin and grace

American moderate-conservatism 3

#1371 · 1987

Looking Forward (Mid)

#1374 · 1988 (August 18, 1988)

Bush 41's 1987 pre-presidential autobiography

Thousand Points of Light (Mid)

#1373 · 1999 (1st ed.), 2014 (revised)

Bush 41's 1988 GOP acceptance speech

All the Best (Late)

Bush 41's 1999 letters collection

American moderate-conservatism / Realist international relations 1

#1372 · 1998

A World Transformed (Late)

#675 · 1954 (collection of poems 1923-54)

Bush and Scowcroft's 1998 foreign-policy presidential memoir

American modernist poetry 1

Collected Poems (Late)

Wallace Stevens

Stevens's 1954 Collected Poems — foundational text of American modernist poetry

American neo-pragmatism 1

#322 · 1989

Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Mid)

Richard Rorty

The "liberal ironist" — Rorty's framework combining private self-creation with public solidarity

American neo-pragmatism / postanalytic philosophy 1

#182 · 1979

Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Mid (the breakthrough book))

Richard Rorty

The mind as the mirror of nature — the founding image of modern epistemology — historically deconstructed. After foundationalism, edifying philosophical conversation

American New Democrat political tradition 1

#350 · 2004

My Life (Late)

William J. Clinton

Clinton's 2004 presidential autobiography — the major retrospective account of his career through the presidency

American Pittsburgh-school analytic philosophy 2

#599 · 1956

Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind (Mid)

Wilfrid Sellars

Sellars's 1956 foundational text — critique of the "Myth of the Given" and the space of reasons

#454 · 1994

Making It Explicit (Mid)

Robert Brandom

Brandom's 1994 systematic statement of inferentialist semantics — content as inferential role in social practices

American political liberalism 1

#565 · 2001

Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (Late)

John Rawls

Rawls's 2001 final statement — restatement of justice as fairness in light of decades of criticism

American political memoir / centrist Republicanism 1

#1747 · 1979

A Time to Heal

Gerald R. Ford

Healing after Watergate — the unelected president's defence of the Nixon pardon and his vision of modest, decent government

American political memoir / Great Society liberalism 1

#1746 · 1971

The Vantage Point

Lyndon Baines Johnson

The Great Society as moral imperative — civil rights, Medicare, education, and the agony of Vietnam from the president who signed them into law

American political science / civic engagement studies 1

#695 · 2000

Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (Late)

Robert D. Putnam

Putnam's 2000 foundational text — the decline of social capital and civic engagement in America

American political theology / Christian republicanism 1

#164 · March 4, 1865 (six weeks before his assassination)

Second Inaugural Address (Late (six weeks before assassination))

Abraham Lincoln

"With malice toward none, with charity for all" — Lincoln's most theologically searching speech: the war as divine judgment on both North and South for the offence of slavery

American political theology / republican civic religion 1

#163 · November 19, 1863 (delivered 4½ months after the Battle of Gettysburg, July 1–3, 1863)

Gettysburg Address (Mature (Civil War))

Abraham Lincoln

"Of the people, by the people, for the people" — the founding text of an American civic religion in which the Civil War becomes a re-founding of the nation on the ground of equality

American populist-conservative tradition 1

#1377 · 2015

Crippled America: How to Make America Great Again (Late)

Donald J. Trump

Trump's 2015 pre-presidential campaign book

American pragmatism 3

The Fixation of Belief (Early)

Charles Sanders Peirce

Peirce's 1877 foundational pragmatist essay — the four methods of belief-fixation

#403 · 1929 (Gifford Lectures at Edinburgh, 1928-29)

The Quest for Certainty (Late)

#402 · 1934 (William James Lectures at Harvard, 1931)

Dewey's 1929 Gifford Lectures critiquing the spectator theory of knowledge

Art as Experience (Late)

#146 · 1907 (from 1906 Lowell Lectures, Boston)

Dewey's 1934 major aesthetic theory — art as the consummation of experience

American pragmatism (founding text) 1

How to Make Our Ideas Clear

Charles Sanders Peirce

Consider what effects might conceivably have practical bearings — your conception of those effects is the whole of your conception of the object

American pragmatism / Jamesean popular philosophy 1

Pragmatism (Late)

William James

Truth happens to an idea — and pragmatism is the philosophical method of evaluating beliefs by their practical consequences

American pragmatism / naturalism 1

#106 · 1925 (Carus Lectures, Chicago; revised 1929)

Experience and Nature (Late)

#185 · 1897 (title essay, addressed to the Philosophical Clubs of Yale and Brown, 1896)

Experience and nature are not opposed — experience is how we know nature, and nature is what experience is of

American pragmatism / philosophy of religion 1

The Will to Believe (Mid (between Principles of Psychology and Varieties of Religious Experience))

William James

In genuine options that cannot be settled on intellectual grounds, our passional and volitional nature must decide — and may legitimately decide for religious belief

American pragmatism / progressive education 1

#401 · 1916

Democracy and Education (Mid)