The short story "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" by Ursula K. Le Guin was published in her 1975 collection The Wind's Twelve Quarters. It focuses on the city of Omelas, whose citizens must decide how high a price they are willing to pay for happiness.

Irish writer Jonathan Swift's essay "A Modest Proposal" was first published in 1729. In it he uses satire to propose a horrifying solution, cannibalism, to the problem of hunger that existed in Ireland at that time.

Elias Canetti's nonfiction work Crowds and Power (1962) examines the origins, behavior, and significance of crowds as forces in society.

The Crucible (1953) by Arthur Miller is a fictionalized dramatization of the hysteria that led to the witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692, during which twenty people were killed for being witches.

James Frazer's 1890 nonfiction work The Golden Bough is a...