His themes range from sex to science, from high politics to gruesome crime, from advanced art to popular literature, all dotted with entertaining nuggets of court and other gossip.

ECONOMIST: Europe 1900-14

It is the beaches' other side though, its mystical allure and the austere introversion it both soothes and engenders, that has become a stalwart feature in Australian film, literature and popular music.

BBC: Shore thing: Australia��s beach obsession

Perhaps most significant is the broader historical study they make of similar trends in popular culture, fashion, literature and politics.

ECONOMIST: Dance

It has been translated into over 50 languages and still remains one of the most popular and important pieces of literature to ever emerge from Africa.

FORBES: Nigerian Literary Legend Chinua Achebe Is Dead

In Search of Excellence by Robert Waterman and Tom Peters was arguably the progenitor of business literature as a modern popular genre.

FORBES: How Tom Peters Taught Me To Knit

Christmas is the most popular of English festivals, and yet it has produced astonishingly little literature.

NPR: Excerpt: 'All Art Is Propaganda'