The volume presents more than sixty of the most important political and social science texts of the 20th century - from Lenin to Mao, from Gandhi to Mbembe, from Maududi, Qutb, Arendt, and Popper to Habermas, Butler, and Sen. All of them are interpreted by leading experts and placed in historical and biographical context. The selected texts reflect the contradictory history of the past century in their diversity and global range. Wars and totalitarian as well as colonial oppression shaped it, just as did the advocacy for human rights and democracy, justice and sustainability, and a scientifically rational basis for politics.