An innovative and accessible guide to government, law, and power

Politics affects us all and the same questions reverberate across history. Who should rule? Is property theft? What’s mightier - the bullet or the ballot?

Discover 80 of the world’s greatest thinkers and their political big ideas that continue to shape our lives today.

Humankind has always asked profound questions about how we can best govern ourselves and how rulers should behave. The Politics Book charts the development of long-running themes, such as attitudes to democracy and violence, developed by thinkers from Confucius in ancient China to Mahatma Gandhi in 20th-century India.

Justice goes hand in hand with politics, and in this comprehensive guide you can explore the championing of people’s rights from the Magna Carta to Thomas Jefferson’s Bill of Rights and Malcolm X’s call to arms. Ideologies inevitably clash and The Politics Book takes you through the big ideas such as capitalism, communism, and fascism exploring their beginnings and social contexts in step-by-step diagrams and illustrations, with clear explanations that cut through the jargon.

Filled with thought-provoking quotes from great thinkers such as Nietzsche, Karl Marx, and Mao Zedong, The Politics Book is a thought-provoking and unmissable read for both students and everyone interested in how the world of government and power works.