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Guides to the Major Disciplines |
The ISI Guides to the Major Disciplines are reader-friendly introductions to the most important fields of knowledge in the liberal arts. Written by leading scholars for both students and the general public, they will be appreciated by anyone desiring a reliable and informative tour of this important subject matter. Each title offers an historical overview of the discipline, explains the central ideas of each subject, and evaluates the works of thinkers whose ideas have shaped our world. They will aid students seeking to make better decisions about their course of study as well as general readers who wish to supplement their education. All who treasure the world of ideas and liberal learning will be motivated by these original and stimulating presentations.
The following guides are available as a PDF:
A STUDENT'S GUIDE TO PSYCHOLOGY
A STUDENT'S GUIDE TO POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
A STUDENT'S GUIDE TO ECONOMICS
A STUDENT'S GUIDE TO PHILOSOPHY
A STUDENT'S GUIDE TO LITERATURE
A STUDENT'S GUIDE TO THE STUDY OF HISTORY
A STUDENT'S GUIDE TO U.S. HISTORY
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Psychology is frequently the most popular major on campus, but it can also be the most treacherous. In this guide, Daniel N. Robinson surveys the philosophical and historical roots of modern psychology and sketches the major schools and thinkers of the discipline. He also identifies those false prejudices—such as contempt for metaphysics and the notion that the mind can be reduced to the chemical processes of the brain—that so often perplex and mislead students of psychology. He ends by calling for psychology to investigate more intensively the problems of moral and civic development. Readers will find Robinson’s book to be an indispensable orientation to this culturally influential field.
Daniel N. Robinson is Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus at Georgetown University,
a member of the philosophy faculty at Oxford University, and Adjunct Professor of Psychology
at Columbia University. He is editor of The Journal of Theoretical & Philosophical Psychology and the author of many books, including
An Intellectual History of Psychology and Aristotle’s Psychology.
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Hidden within every political debate—in legislatures, on radio talk shows, and even in coffee shops—is an implicit philosophy of the polity, or a particular understanding of the limits and possibilities of human life in community. Harvard University's Harvey C. Mansfield, one of the philosophers who have shaped our fundamental views of politics through the ages. In an era when "partisanship" is deplored, Mansfield shows that taking sides in disputes about the common good is a permanent part of politics; and it is the place to begin the quest for wisdom concerning the human things.
Dr. Mansfield is the William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of Government at Harvard University. He has held Guggenheim and NEH Fellowships and has been a Fellow at the National Humanities Center. One of America's leading political theorists, his books include Machiavelli's Virtue, Taming the Prince, America's Constitutional Soul, and The Spirit of Liberalism.
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What is economics and what can you expect to learn from studying it? In this guide, Paul Heyne, for many years one of America’s most respected free-market economists, asks this question as his starting point. The story of the progress of economic thought—as embodied in the methods and theories of Adam Smith, John Maynard Keynes, Friedrich von Hayek, James Buchanan, and other influential scholars—provides Heyne with the material for an effective demonstration of the power and promise of the economic way of thinking.
Paul Heyne (1931-2000) was Senior Lecturer in the Department of Economics at the University of Washington, where he had worked since 1976.
Revered as an oustanding teacher, in his writing he specialized in ethical criticisms of economic systems and the history of economic thought.
His best-known work is The Economic Way of Thinking, an important and popular introductory economics textbook now in its ninth edition.
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A STUDENT'S GUIDE TO PHILOSOPHY examines these questions: Who is a philosopher? Can philosophical thought be avoided? What have philosophers written over the ages? And why should we care? In this critical essay, these and other questions are posed and answered by one of America's leading philosophers, Ralph M. McInerny of the University of Notre Dame. Schools of thought are examined with humor and verve, and the principal works of philosophers and scholars are recommended.
Ralph M. McInerny is Michael P. Grace Professor of Medieval Studies and Director of the Jacques Maritain Center at the University of Notre Dame. A prolific writer, he is the author of many scholarly books, including The Logic of Analogy, Aquinas on Human Action, and The Question of Christian Ethics. His internationally famous novels, the Father Dowling Mysteries, have been serialized for television. DOWNLOAD NOW.
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A STUDENT'S GUIDE TO LITERATURE takes up these questions: In a time of mass culture and pulp fiction, can great literature still be discerned, much less defended? Why is literature so compelling? What should we read? Literary scholar R. V. Young addresses these timely issues in this guide to Western literature and poetry. He demonstrates that literature liberates the mind from cultural and temporal provincialism by expanding our intellectual and emotional horizons. Learn how great fiction and poetry are integral to a liberal education, and visit the classic works of literature again — or for the first time.
R. V. Young is Professor and Director of Graduate Programs in the Department of English at North Carolina State University.
He is the author of At War with the Word: Literary Theory and Liberal Education (ISI Books) and co-founder and
joint editor of the John Donne Journal. His other books are
Richard Crashaw and the Spanish Golden Age, a bilingual edition of
Justus Lipsius's Principles of Letter-Writing (with M. Thomas Hester),
and Doctrine and Devotion in Seventeenth-Century Literature. DOWNLOAD NOW.
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A STUDENT'S GUIDE TO THE STUDY OF HISTORY
To study history is to learn about oneself. And to fail to grasp the importance of the past—to remain ignorant of the deeds and writings of previous generations—is to bind oneself by the passions and prejudices of the age into which one is born. John Lukacs, one of today's most widely published historians, explains what the study of history entails, how it has been approached over the centuries, and why it should be undertaken by today's students. This guide is an invitation to become a master of the historian's craft.
John Lukacs taught history at Chestnut Hill College in Philadelphia until his recent retirement. He held visiting professorships at many universities, including Columbia, Tufts, Johns Hopkins, and the University of Pennsylvania. A proliWc author, he has written more than twenty books, including: Five Days in London, May 1940; A Thread of Years; The Hitler of History; and The End of the Twentieth Century and the End of the Modern Age, which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. He is the recipient of many academic honors and awards.
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No nation in modern history has had a more powerful sense of its own distinctiveness than the United States. Yet few Americans understand the immensely varied sources of that sense and the fascinating debates that have always swirled around our attempts to define "American" with greater precision. All too many have come to regard the study of their national history as tedious, just as they fail to embrace the past as something in which they must be consciously grounded. In this introduction to the study of U.S. history, Wilfred M. McClay invites us to experience the perennial freshness and vitality of this great subject as he explores some of the enduring commitments and persistent tensions that have made America what it is.
Wilfred M. McClay holds the SunTrust Bank Chair of Excellence in the Humanities at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. He is the author of The Masterless: Self and Society in Modern America, which received the prestigious Merle Curti Award from the Organization of American Historians. He has been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Academy of Education, and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and was recognized as one of the nation’s outstanding educators in the Templeton Foundation Honor Rolls.
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