A Little History of Philosophy

I loved “A Little History of the World” (by a different author) but this book didn't measure up. I think that Philosophy doesn't necessarily lend itself well to being presented in a “history” format: forty important philosophers and their views, one per chapter. This book would have been more interesting and better structured if it had been organized around ideas, rather than people. Trying to cover so much, so piecemeal, in such a small volume, led to me feeling like the book glossed over the truly important ideas and never went deep enough to get me actually pondering. That being said, I did learn a lot and come away wanting to dive in a little bit deeper, so it wasn't a total waste. One other random thing I didn't like about the book is the author's subtle bias against religion - when a huge portion of the book was devoted to thinking about religion and Christianity, it was off-putting not to have the material presented in an unbiased way.

You could forego a massive investment of time and money by reading this survey of giants in western philosophy.

If you've already spent more hours than you care to admit in university lecture halls, then replace those underwhelming exposures with Warburton's concise and useful recaps instead.

I quite enjoyed the mini-biographies of the philosophers mentioned! Just wish we'd stop using “he or she” when “they” exists; it's shorter, still grammatically correct, and more inclusive too!