Politics probably hasn’t changed fundamentally since Plato’s time, so his Republic is a great place to start on the subject. Then there is Politics, A Treatise on Government by Aristotle. Later we find the Right Honorable Edmund Burke’s Thoughts on the Present Discontents, which might resemble discontents of today. Two Treatise of Government by John Locke are standard reading. Then there are the masterpieces Common Sense and The Rights of Man by Thomas Paine, The Leviathan by Hobbes, and the fictional book Utopia by Thomas More.

Thomas Robert Malthus wrote the controversial Essay on the Principle of Population, while the Economic Consequences of the Peace by Keynes is a founding text for modern economic though. The Communist Manifesto is required reading, but don’t miss the Selected Essays by Marx. Oscar Wilde took his stab at Socialism, in Soul of Man Under Socialism, which turns out more like anarchism. Another not-to-miss classic is Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville. Or read the Rise and Fall of The Confederate Government by Jefferson Davis. More modern texts here are: Shock and Awe, Achieving Rapid Dominance by Harlan Ullman, for the Hawks, for the Doves there’s the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations.