Books like Natural Right and History

01

A Theory of Justice

John Rawls · Philosophy

A Theory of Justice, published in 1971, is John Rawls's attempt to construct a systematic alternative to utilitarianism in political philosophy.

Shares political philosophy and justice with Natural Right and History.

02

Meditations

Marcus Aurelius · Philosophy

Meditations is not a book Marcus Aurelius wrote for anyone to read.

A kindred philosophy read.

03

Man's Search for Meaning

Viktor E. Frankl · Psychology

Man's Search for Meaning is Viktor Frankl's account of his years as a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps, including Auschwitz, and the psychological theory he developed from that experience.

A kindred philosophy read.

04

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion

Jonathan Haidt · Psychology

The Righteous Mind is Jonathan Haidt's argument that moral reasoning is not the source of our moral judgments — it's the press secretary for them.

A kindred philosophy read.

05

Anarchy, State, and Utopia

Robert Nozick · Philosophy

Anarchy, State, and Utopia is Robert Nozick's 1974 response to John Rawls and a foundational text of libertarian political philosophy.

Shares political philosophy and justice with Natural Right and History.

06

The Republic

Plato · Philosophy

The Republic is Plato's most ambitious work, a sustained inquiry into the nature of justice staged as a dialogue among Socrates and his companions in Athens.

Shares political philosophy and justice with Natural Right and History.

07

Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture

Robert Venturi · Philosophy

Robert Venturi's 1966 manifesto opened with one of the most quoted sentences in architectural criticism: "I am for a messy vitality over obvious unity." Published by the Museum of Modern Art when high modernism was still orthodoxy, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture made the case that the International Style's insistence on purity, clarity, and logical consistency had produced buildings that were boring — and that the supposedly inferior traditions it replaced, from Mannerism through Baroque to vernacular American commercial architecture, were actually richer and more humanly satisfying.

Both dig into historicism.

08

Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?

Michael J. Sandel · Philosophy

Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?

Both dig into justice.

09

The Divine Comedy: Inferno

Dante Alighieri · Philosophy

The Inferno is the first of three canticles in Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, written between approximately 1308 and 1320.

Both dig into justice.

10

Utilitarianism

John Stuart Mill · Philosophy

Utilitarianism, first published in 1863 after appearing in Fraser's Magazine the previous year, is Mill's defense and refinement of the utilitarian moral theory he inherited from Jeremy Bentham.

Both dig into justice.

11

In Cold Blood

Truman Capote · Memoir

Truman Capote's account of the 1959 murders of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas — and of the investigation, capture, trial, and execution of the killers Perry Smith and Richard Hickock — is the founding document of the true crime genre and one of the most admired works of American nonfiction of the twentieth century.

Both dig into justice.

12

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption

Bryan Stevenson · Memoir

Bryan Stevenson's memoir of his career as a capital defense attorney in Alabama, and specifically of his years working on the case of Walter McMillian — a Black man wrongly convicted of murder and sentenced to death in Monroe County, Alabama — is simultaneously a riveting legal narrative and a sustained moral argument about the American criminal justice system's treatment of the poor and of Black defendants.

Both dig into justice.