The thirty minds that shaped our civilisation (edited by Edward de Bono) There is nothing more powerful than an idea. At some point in time the thinking of a single person puts things together a new way – and an idea is born. That idea can change the world and the lives of everyone living in the world. A single idea from a singular person can have this effect. That is the fascination of thinking and ideas. This book is about the greatest thinkers – the minds that have shaped our civilisation. Essays on thirty great thinkers – de Bono’s individual selection – are set in the context of the history of Western thought. From Moses, through such diverse figures as Jesus, Columbus, Descartes, Marx and Freud, to Sartre, the book ranges across the wide field of human achievement and perhaps surprisingly includes few philosophers. A particularly original feature of the book is the visualisation of each thinker’s achievement and the way it changed the existing line of thought. The book is fully illustrated with portraits and other documentary material. With 100 black and white illustrations and 30 diagrams. The thirty greatest thinkers in the book: Moses, Confucius, Plato, Aristotle, Euclid, Jesus, Augustine, Aquinas, Columbus, Machiavelli, Copernicus, Luther, Bacon, Descartes, Newton, Rousseau, Kant, Malthus, Clausewitz, Darwin, Marx, Clerk Maxwell, William James, Nietzsche, Pavlov, Freud, Einstein, Keynes, Wiener and Sartre.