Sir Humphrey Gilbert.
PORTRAIT OF SIR HUMPHREY GILBERT (OIL ON BOARD), ENGLISH SCHOOL, (SIXTEENTH CENTURY)/COMPTON CASTLE, TORQUAY, DEVON, UK/NATIONAL TRUST PHOTOGRAPHIC LIBRARY/THE BRIDGEMAN ART LIBRARY.
Facsimile of the first page of Plimouths Great Book of Deeds, in the handwriting of Governor William Bradford.
Thomas Hobbes.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.
The cover of Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS RARE BOOK & SPECIAL COLLECTIONS.
Sir William Petty.
SIR WILLIAM PETTY, FROM OLD ENGLAND’S WORTHIES BY LORD BROUGHAM AND OTHERS, PUBLISHED LONDON, C. 1880S (LITHO), ENGLISH SCHOOL, (NINETEENTH CENTURY)/PRIVATE COLLECTION/KEN WELSH/THE BRIDGEMAN ART LIBRARY.
Adam Smith.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.
John Locke.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.
Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.
Karl Marx.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.
John Dee.
PORTRAIT OF JOHN DEE (1547–1608) (OIL ON CANVAS), ENGLISH SCHOOL, (SEVENTEENTH CENTURY)/ASHMOLEAN MUSEUM, UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD, UK/THE BRIDGEMAN ART LIBRARY.
Sergei Eisenstein’s vision of Ivan the Terrible, the founder of the Russian autocracy.
Peter the Great.
PAINTING BY ALEKSEY ANTROPOV.
The Qianlong emperor.
BEIJING PALACE MUSEUM.
Thomas Jefferson.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.
Gunter’s chain; twenty-two yards, one hundred links. The instrument that measured out the United States and the British Empire.
COURTESY OF WIKIMEDIA COMMONS, PHOTO BY USER ROSEOHIORESIDENT.
Patent for land ownership in Ohio in 1805, signed by President Thomas Jefferson and Secretary of State James Madison.
NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS ADMINISTRATION.
A combine harvester in an Idaho wheat field.
COURTESY OF THE UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE.
Edward Gibbon Wakefield.
COURTESY OF THE WIKIMEDIA COMMONS AND THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF AUSTRALIA.
Henry George.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.
Like a European feudal knight, a samurai owed his standing to the peasants who worked his land.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.
Che Guevara.
The brutal march of collectivization that laid the foundations for the cold war.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.
Walt Rostow.
COURTESY OF THE LYNDON B. JOHNSON PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY, PHOTO BY YOICHI R. OKAMOTO.
Norman Borlaug.
COURTESY OF FLICKR USER CIMMYT, USED UNDER CREATIVE COMMONS 2.0 LICENSE.
Friederich von Hayek.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.
Yang Wu’s famous “nail house” in Chongqing.
AP PHOTO/EYEPRESS.