Book excerpt: G. D. H. Cole was one of the foremost British socialist thinkers of the twentieth century. His literary output was immense and encompassed works of social theory, economics, political economy, economic history, social and labour history, political theory, history of thought and sociology. The books and pamphlets chosen for this edition are amongst his most significant. They are representative of the different phases of his thinking and illustrative of an acute and inquiring socialist mind as it wrestled with the formidable political and intellect challenges confronted by socialists in this most turbulent of centuries. This set re-issues 10 works of the well-known socialist thinker G. D. H. Cole and one volume of collected pamphlets, originally published between 1917 and 1956. The works in this collection encompass three critical periods of Cole’s socialist thinking: the guild socialist decade from 1913-23; the post 1929 period when his political economy was dominated by the notion of socialist economic intervention and planning, and the post-war period when, like other socialist theorists, he sought to come to terms with the particular challenges posed by the legacy of the Attlee governments, and the emergence of an affluent society. A substantial introduction by Noel Thompson places the works in their social, political and historical context and illustrates their continued relevance. For institutional purchases for e-book sets please contact [email protected] (customers in the UK, Europe and Rest of World)