WThe Anatomy of Revolution is a 1938 book by Crane Brinton outlining the "uniformities" of four major political revolutions: the English Revolution of the 1640s, the American, the French, and the 1917 Russian Revolution. Brinton notes how the revolutions followed a life-cycle from the Old Order to a moderate regime to a radical regime, to Thermidorian reaction. The book has been called "classic, "famous" and a "watershed in the study of revolution", and has been influential enough to have inspired advice given to US President Jimmy Carter by his National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski during the Iranian Revolution.
WArms and the Covenant is a 1938 non-fiction book written by Winston Churchill. It was later published in the United States as While England Slept; a Survey of World Affairs, 1932–1938. It highlighted the United Kingdom's lack of military preparation to face the threat of Nazi Germany's expansion and attacked the current policies of the British government, led by the Conservative Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. The book galvanised many of his supporters and built up public opposition to the Munich Agreement.
WThe Behavior of Organisms is B.F. Skinner's first book and was published in May 1938 as a volume of the Century Psychology Series. It set out the parameters for the discipline that would come to be called the experimental analysis of behavior (EAB) and Behavior Analysis. This book was reviewed in 1939 by Ernest R. Hilgard. Skinner looks at science behavior and how the analysis of behavior produces data which can be studied, rather than acquiring data through a conceptual or neural process. In the book, behavior is classified either as respondent or operant behavior, where respondent behavior is caused by an observable stimulus and operant behavior is where there is no observable stimulus for a behavior. The behavior is studied in depth with rats and the feeding responses they exhibit.
WThe Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution is a 1938 book by Trinidadian historian C. L. R. James, a history of the Haitian Revolution of 1791–1804. He went to Paris to research this work, where he met Haitian military historian Alfred Auguste Nemours. James's text places the revolution in the context of the French Revolution, and focuses on the leadership of Toussaint L'Ouverture, who was born a slave but rose to prominence espousing the French Revolutionary ideals of liberty and equality. These ideals, which many French revolutionaries did not maintain consistently with regard to the black humanity of their colonial possessions, were embraced, according to James, with a greater purity by the persecuted blacks of Haiti; such ideals "meant far more to them than to any Frenchman."
WThe Coming Victory of Democracy is a book published in 1938 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
WDeath in the Making (1938) is a photographic book by Gerda Taro and Robert Capa that documents the Spanish Civil War. It was published by Covici · Friede Publishers while the conflict was still underway. It is dedicated to Taro, who died in the battlefield the year prior. The book also includes photographs by David Seymour and André Kertész. Though the photographs are credited to Robert Capa, Capa has written that the work was a collective project by both photographers and that the photographs “are interspersed and unattributed.” Taro is also thought to have been excluded from authorship for fear that publishers would take a female photographer less seriously. This book helped to cement Capa's and Taro's reputations as leading war photographers and pioneers in photojournalism.
WEnemies of Promise is a critical and autobiographical work written by Cyril Connolly first published in 1938.
WEurope and the Czechs was an influential and widely read best-selling Penguin Special written by journalist Shiela Grant Duff in 1938 during the appeasement of World War II. Her prominence as a journalist was established with this publication. It was published on the day British prime minister Neville Chamberlain returned from Munich in which he pressured Czechoslovakia to cede territory to Nazi Germany, and it was distributed to every member of parliament. In her book she defended the Czech nation and criticized British policy, claiming that war could be an option if it were necessary to confront Hitler's aggression in Czechoslovakia. She argued against the policy of "peace at almost any price".
WThe Evolution of Physics: The Growth of Ideas from Early Concepts to Relativity and Quanta is a science book for the lay reader. Written by the physicists Albert Einstein and Leopold Infeld, it traces the development of ideas in physics. It was originally published in 1938 by Cambridge University Press. It was a popular success, and was featured in a Time cover story.
WThe Functions of the Executive is a book by Chester I. Barnard (1886–1961) that presents a "theory of cooperation and organization" and "a study of the functions and of the methods of operation of executives in formal organizations." It was originally published in 1938; a Thirtieth Anniversary edition, published in 1968, is still in print.
WRobin George Collingwood was an English philosopher, historian and archaeologist. He is best known for his philosophical works, including The Principles of Art (1938) and the posthumously published The Idea of History (1946).
WGuide to Kulchur is a non-fiction book by the American poet Ezra Pound. Published in London in July 1938 by Faber & Faber, the book examines 2,500 years of cultural history, beginning with the Analects of Confucius. The first chapter was published in Milan in June 1937 as a pamphlet, Confucius/Digest of the Analects, by Giovanni Scheiwiller.
WThe History of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks): Short Course, translated to English under the title History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks): Short Course, is a textbook on the history of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), first published in 1938. Colloquially known as the Short Course, it became the most widely disseminated book during the time that Joseph Stalin served as the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the AUCP (B) and one of the most important works elucidating Marxism–Leninism.
WHomage to Catalonia is George Orwell's personal account of his experiences and observations fighting for the POUM militia of the Republican army during the Spanish Civil War. The war was one of the defining events of his political outlook and a significant part of what led him to write in 1946, "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for Democratic Socialism, as I understand it."
WHomo Ludens is a book originally published in Dutch in 1938 by Dutch historian and cultural theorist Johan Huizinga. It discusses the importance of the play element of culture and society. Huizinga suggests that play is primary to and a necessary condition of the generation of culture. The Latin word ludens is the present active participle of the verb ludere, which itself is cognate with the noun ludus. Ludus has no direct equivalent in English, as it simultaneously refers to sport, play, school, and practice.
WKierkegaardian Studies is a book about Søren Kierkegaard by philosopher Jean Wahl, originally published in 1938 in Paris, France. Its publication marked a significant turning-point in French philosophy, which formally introduced and disseminated Kierkegaard's philosophy to France.
WLarousse Gastronomique is an encyclopedia of gastronomy. The majority of the book is about French cuisine, and contains recipes for French dishes and cooking techniques. The first edition included few non-French dishes and ingredients; later editions include many more. The book was originally published by Éditions Larousse in Paris in 1938.
WMy Memoir is a 1938 memoir by Edith Wilson, a First Lady of the United States and the wife of Woodrow Wilson. She wrote the book as an apologia to defend her husband from perceived attacks and preserve his legacy. Critics generally considered the book to be "delightful" as a "collection of episodes", but to have little historical value except for its account of Woodrow Wilson's stroke and last days in office.
WNine Chains to the Moon is a book by R. Buckminster Fuller, first published in 1938. The title refers to the observation that, when the book was written, the world population of humans, if stood one atop another, could form chains that would reach back and forth between Earth and the Moon nine times.
WOpus Postumum was the last work by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, who died in 1804. Although efforts to publish the manuscript were made in 1882, it was not until 1936–1938 that a German edition of the whole manuscript appeared.
WThe Oxford Companion to Music is a music reference book in the series of Oxford Companions produced by the Oxford University Press. It was originally conceived and written by Percy Scholes and published in 1938. Since then, it has undergone two distinct rewritings: one by Denis Arnold, in 1983, and the latest edition by Alison Latham in 2002. It is "arguably the most successful book on music ever produced".
WA Peculiar Treasure is an autobiography by American author Edna Ferber. The book was first published in 1938 by Doubleday, Doran, & Co. at 398 pages long. The book is Ferber's first autobiography, and recounts her small-town, Midwest childhood, and her subsequent rise to authorship and the Pulitzer Prize. Her ascent from night-court reporter at a small-town newspaper to the author of So Big is set against the rising tensions in Europe and upsurging anti-semitism in the US.
WPhilosophy of Existence is a book by German psychiatrist and philosopher Karl Jaspers. It is both a discussion on the history of philosophy and an exposition of Jaspers' own philosophical system, which is often viewed as a form of existentialism. He put forth concepts such as existence in a minimal and superficial state, "dasein", and Existenz, a state of authentic true being, and their relationship with the "encompassing", an elusive being often understood as the totality of consciousness, the world itself, and other forms of determinate objects. Jaspers stressed the importance of transcendence, similar to the term "leap of faith" implied in the works of Søren Kierkegaard.
WPower: A New Social Analysis by Bertrand Russell is a work in social philosophy written by Bertrand Russell. Power, for Russell, is one's ability to achieve goals. In particular, Russell has in mind social power, that is, power over people.
WRoark's Formulas for Stress and Strain was first published in 1938 and the most current ninth edition was published in March 2020.
WSahih Al-Bukhari: The Early Years of Islam is the translation and explanation of Sahih al-Bukhari by Muhammad Asad.
WA Short Life of Kierkegaard is a book by Walter Lowrie. The book's first edition was published in 1938 by Oxford University Press simply under the title Kierkegaard. The book was influential for being the first English biography which covers both wider and lesser known areas of Søren Kierkegaard's life, philosophy, and theology. Lowrie was commissioned by the editor of Oxford University Press Charles Williams to write the biography and to translate into English for the first time several of Kierkegaard's seminal works in full, including Either/Or and Philosophical Fragments.
WThe book Some Still Live by Frank Glasgow Tinker Jr, was published by Funk & Wagnalls Co in New York, 1938 and was recently republished by The Clapton Press, London.
WTeachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith is a book compiling selected sermons and portions of sermons and sundry teachings of Joseph Smith, the first prophet of the Latter Day Saint movement.
WUnderstanding Poetry was an American college textbook and poetry anthology by Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren, first published in 1938. The book influenced New Criticism and went through its fourth edition in 1976.
WWorld Brain is a collection of essays and addresses by the English science fiction pioneer, social reformer, evolutionary biologist and historian H. G. Wells, dating from the period of 1936–1938. Throughout the book, Wells describes his vision of the World Brain: a new, free, synthetic, authoritative, permanent "World Encyclopaedia" that could help world citizens make the best use of universal information resources and make the best contribution to world peace.
WZoo is a book by Louis MacNeice. It was published by Michael Joseph in November 1938, and according to the publisher's list belongs in the category of belles lettres. It was one of four books by Louis MacNeice to appear in 1938, along with The Earth Compels, I Crossed the Minch and Modern Poetry: A Personal Essay.