Biography & autobiography / Philosophers

Marx and Marxism

by Gregory Claeys – Bold Type Books (April 23, 2018)

A new biography of Karl Marx, tracing the life of this titanic figure and the legacy of his work

Karl Marx remains the most influential and controversial political thinker in history. He died quietly in 1883...

Adam Smith

by Jesse Norman – Basic Books (September 10, 2018)

A dazzlingly original, "remarkable" account of the life and thought of legendary economist Adam Smith (Financial Times).

Adam Smith (1723-1790) is now widely regarded as the greatest economist of all time. But...

Exact Thinking in Demented Times

by Karl Sigmund & Douglas R Hofstadter – Basic Books (December 04, 2017)

A dazzling group biography of the early twentieth-century thinkers who transformed the way the world thought about math and science

Inspired by Albert Einstein's theory of relativity and Bertrand Russell and...

Why We Drive

by Matthew B. Crawford & Ron Butler – HarperAudio (June 09, 2020)

From  "one of the most influential thinkers of our time" (Sunday Times), a brilliant, first-of-its-kind celebration of driving as a unique pathway of human freedom, one now critically threatened by automation. ...

Keep Moving

by Dick Van Dyke & Todd Gold – Blackstone Publishing (October 13, 2015)

In this entertaining and inspirational memoir, Hollywood legend Dick Van Dyke shares his secret to staying resilient in old age.

Beloved Hollywood icon Dick Van Dyke will celebrate his ninetieth birthday in December...

The Vision of Léon Walras

by Donald Walker, Louis Rukeyser, Israel Kirzner & Mike Hassell et al. – Knowledge Products (April 03, 2006)

Léon Walras (1834–1910) transformed economics from a literary discipline into a mathematical, deterministic science. For the first time, Walras expressed the view that all markets are related and that their...

Socrates

by Thomas C. Brickhouse, Nicholas Smith, Lynn Redgrave & John Lachs et al. – Knowledge Products (March 01, 2006)

Socrates was the first great philosopher of the West. Though he left no written works, there were many accounts of his life and philosophy. Socrates was an eccentric who went about Athens in bare feet and tattered...

Søren Kierkegaard

by George Connell, Charlton Heston, John Lachs & Mike Hassell et al. – Knowledge Products (March 02, 2006)

For Kierkegaard, truth is a subjective reality which we must live, not something to simply consider and discuss. His self-consciousness and self-examination highlight the practical demands of existence, and...

John Dewey

by John J. Stuhr, Charlton Heston, John Lachs & Mike Hassell et al. – Knowledge Products (January 31, 2006)

John Dewey was America's most influential philosopher. Dewey's views are known as "pragmatism," which emphasizes action and results. He believed that knowledge and ethics, as well as art and religion, live only...

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

by John E. Smith, Charlton Heston, John Lachs & Mike Hassell et al. – Knowledge Products (January 18, 2006)

Friedrich Hegel developed a profound and influential synthesis of all prior knowledge. He aimed to make philosophy an all-comprehensive science that would restate, in rational language, the truth of Christianity....

Jean-Paul Sartre

by John Compton, Charlton Heston, John Lachs & Mike Hassell et al. – Knowledge Products (January 30, 2006)

Jean-Paul Sartre, a French philosopher, is perhaps the best known advocate of existentialism. In this view, no external authority gives life meaning: mankind is radically free and responsible. In every moment...

Heidegger in 90 Minutes

by Paul Strathern & Simon Vance – Blackstone Publishing (June 25, 2005)

One of two major philosophical traditions of the twentieth century was Wittgenstein's linguistic analysis. The other, diametrically opposed, came from Heidegger, and his fundamental question: "What is the meaning...

Confucius in 90 Minutes

by Paul Strathern & Simon Vance – Blackstone Publishing (June 25, 2005)

Confucius taught a moral wisdom that would become a predominant social force in China from the second century BCE until the mid-twentieth century. It would appear that his aim was to turn his pupils into good...

Hegel in 90 Minutes

by Paul Strathern & Simon Vance – Blackstone Publishing (June 25, 2005)

Hegel’s dialectical method produced the most grandiose metaphysical system known to man. Its most vital element was the dialectic of the thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. This sprung from Hegel’s aim to...

Living Biographies of Great Philosophers

by Henry Thomas, Dana Lee Thomas & Edward Lewis – Blackstone Publishing (June 22, 2005)

Every biography is a story of adventure. The energetic personalities of the world represent an adventure in living. The philosophical personalities, on the other hand, represent an adventure in thinking. And...

Old Path White Clouds

by Thich Nhat Hanh & Edoardo Ballerini – Blackstone Publishing (January 31, 2016)

Old Path White Clouds presents the life and teachings of Gautama Buddha. Drawn directly from twenty-four Pali, Sanskrit, and Chinese sources, and retold by Thich Nhat Hanh in his inimitably beautiful style,...

Ecce Homo

by Friedrich Nietzsche, Stephen Van Doren & Anthony M. Ludovici – Blackstone Publishing (July 23, 2009)

Ecce Homo, which is Latin for “behold the man,” is an autobiography like no other. Deliberately provocative, Nietzsche subverts the conventions of the genre and pushes his philosophical positions to combative...

Orwell

by Michael Shelden & Frederick Davidson – Blackstone Publishing (April 25, 2012)

In his probing and revelatory biography of one of the great prose stylists of the twentieth century, acclaimed biographer Michael Shelden breaks new ground in the evocation of George Orwell’s personal life...

Autobiographical Reflections

by Eric Voegelin & Bernard Mayes – Blackstone Publishing (January 01, 2007)

This is an ideal introduction to the ideas of Eric Voegelin, a man whom many regard as the greatest thinker of our time. Here we encounter the stages in the development of his unique philosophy of consciousness;...

Facets of Ayn Rand

by Charles Sures, Mary Ann Sures, Susan O’Malley & Leonard Peikoff – Blackstone Publishing (June 24, 2005)

Facets of Ayn Rand is based on forty-eight hours of interviews with Mary Ann and Charles Sures, longtime personal friends of Ayn Rand. Their recollections make vividly real the Ayn Rand they knew so well.

Here...

Aristotle in 90 Minutes

by Paul Strathern & Simon Vance – Blackstone Publishing (June 25, 2005)

Aristotle wrote on everything from the shape of seashells to sterility, from speculations on the nature of the soul to meteorology, poetry, art, and even the interpretation of dreams. Apart from mathematics,...

Nietzsche in 90 Minutes

by Paul Strathern & Simon Vance – Blackstone Publishing (June 25, 2005)

With Friedrich Nietzsche, philosophy was dangerous not only for philosophers but for everyone. Nietzsche ultimately went mad, but his ideas presaged a collective madness that had horrific consequences in Europe...

Descartes in 90 Minutes

by Paul Strathern & Simon Vance – Blackstone Publishing (June 25, 2005)

René Descartes spent much of his life in solitude. Fortunately, these countless lonely hours helped Descartes produce the declaration that changed all philosophy: “I think, therefore I am.” Convincing himself...

David Hume

by Nicholas Capaldi, Charlton Heston, John Lachs & Mike Hassell et al. – Knowledge Products (January 05, 2006)

David Hume (1711-1776) represented the culmination of the British philosophy of sense-experience. Although he lived in the age of reason, Hume had profound doubts about our ability to know anything in the world...

Immanuel Kant

by A. J. Mandt, Charlton Heston, John Lachs & Mike Hassell et al. – Knowledge Products (January 23, 2006)

Immanuel Kant's "transcendental" philosophy transcends the question of what we know to ask how we know it. Before Kant, philosophers had debated for centuries whether knowledge is derived from experience or...

Arthur Schopenhauer

by Mark Stone, Charlton Heston, John Lachs & Mike Hassell et al. – Knowledge Products (January 01, 2007)

Arthur Schopenhauer was the most articulate and influential pessimist in the history of human thought. He was convinced that the space and time of ordinary life is an illusion, that the world consists of two...

Schopenhauer in 90 Minutes

by Paul Strathern & Simon Vance – Blackstone Publishing (June 25, 2005)

Schopenhauer, the "philosopher of pessimism," makes it very plain that he regards the world and our life in it as a bad joke. But if the world is indifferent to our fate, it doesn't thwart us on purpose. The...

Spinoza in 90 Minutes

by Paul Strathern & Simon Vance – Blackstone Publishing (June 25, 2005)

Spinoza’s brilliant metaphysical system was derived neither from reality nor experience. Starting from basic assumptions, with a series of geometric proofs he built a universe which was also God—one and...

Socrates in 90 Minutes

by Paul Strathern & Simon Vance – Blackstone Publishing (June 25, 2005)

Just a century after it had begun, philosophy entered its greatest age with the appearance of Socrates, who spent so much of his time talking about philosophy on the streets of Athens that he never got around...

Rousseau in 90 Minutes

by Paul Strathern & Simon Vance – Blackstone Publishing (June 25, 2005)

In Rousseau we encounter a walking ego, a naked sensibility. Feeling triumphs over intellectual argument in his works, which are both deeply stirring and deeply inconsistent. Yet while his contemporaries Kant...

Baruch Spinoza

by Thomas Cook, Charlton Heston, John Lachs & Mike Hassell et al. – Knowledge Products (April 24, 2006)

A Portuguese Jew living in Holland, Spinoza was excommunicated because of the unorthodox view he took of God. Spinoza wrote in the rationalist style of a geometric proof to develop his idea of God as the infinite,...

Plato

by Berel Lang, Charlton Heston, John Lachs & Mike Hassell et al. – Knowledge Products (February 17, 2006)

Plato was the first great philosopher of the West to organize and record the issues and questions that define philosophy. A student of Socrates, Plato preserved the teachings of his mentor in many famous “dialogues”...

Aristotle

by Thomas C. Brickhouse, Charlton Heston, John Lachs & Mike Hassell et al. – Knowledge Products (January 14, 2010)

Few philosophers have so extensively influenced thought and language as Aristotle. His conception of the universe pervades Christian theology. Knowledge of his thought is necessary to understand Bacon, Galileo,...

C. S. Lewis

by John Lawlor, Bernard Mayes & Walter Hooper – Blackstone Publishing (January 28, 2010)

From his rare vantage point as Lewis' student, friend, and professional colleague, Professor John Lawlor recalls Lewis "in his habit as he lived." He offers an unforgettable account of studying under Lewis and...

Descartes, Bacon, and Modern Philosophy

by Jeffrey Tlumak, Lynn Redgrave, John Lachs & Wendy McElroy et al. – Knowledge Products (January 08, 2006)

These two great seventeenth-century philosophers aimed to break free of oppressive traditions. Free scientific inquiry led them to skeptically question everything, though they also tried to reconcile science...

Ayn Rand and the World She Made

by Anne C. Heller & Bernadette Dunne – Blackstone Publishing (October 27, 2009)

Ayn Rand is best known as the author of two phenomenally best-selling ideological novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, which have sold over twelve million copies in the United States alone. Through them,...

The Philosophy of Andy Warhol

by Andy Warhol & Vikas Adam – Blackstone Publishing (June 09, 2015)

ThePhilosophy of Andy Warhol, first published in 1975, is less a memoir than a collectionof riffs and reflections. The private AndyWarhol talks about love, sex, food, beauty, fame, work, money, success; aboutNew...

Simone de Beauvoir

by Ladelle McWhorter, Lynn Redgrave, John Lachs & Wendy McElroy et al. – Knowledge Products (February 27, 2006)

Simone de Beauvoir stands as a towering figure in the twentieth century's flowering of thought among women. There are probably more women philosophers alive today than in all of prior history, and their perspective...

Voltaire and Rousseau

by Charles M. Sherover, Lynn Redgrave, John Lachs & Wendy McElroy et al. – Knowledge Products (April 09, 2006)

In the great ferment of the French Revolution, Voltaire and Rousseau stood out as intellectual giants. Voltaire’s incisive wit and commitment to translucent reason stands in sharp contrast to Rousseau’s...

William James, Charles Peirce, and American Pragmatism

by James Campbell, Lynn Redgrave, John Lachs & Wendy McElroy et al. – Knowledge Products (January 29, 2006)

C. S. Peirce was an authentic American genius who developed a tough-minded pragmatism and a sweeping philosophy of evolutionary love. William James, a trained physician, carefully studied human experience, including...

St. Thomas Aquinas

by Kenneth L. Schmitz, Charlton Heston, John Lachs & Mike Hassell et al. – Knowledge Products (March 05, 2006)

St. Thomas Aquinas is known for producing history's most complete system of Christian philosophy. In the late thirteenth century, this quiet, reflective Dominican scholar combined the work of Aristotle with...

St. Augustine

by R. J. O’Connell, Charlton Heston, John Lachs & Mike Hassell et al. – Knowledge Products (March 04, 2006)

St. Augustine (AD 354–430) was the first great systematic Christian philosopher. He attempted to combine the philosophical insights of Plato with the faith explicated in the Bible. Augustine thought of Plato’s...

Friedrich Nietzsche

by Richard Schacht, Charlton Heston, John Lachs & Mike Hassell et al. – Knowledge Products (January 16, 2006)

Near the end of the nineteenth century, Friedrich Nietzsche boldly announced that God is dead. There are no absolute truths, he said; the only reality is this world of life and death, conflict and change, creation...

Bertrand Russell and A. N. Whitehead

by Paul Kuntz, Lynn Redgrave, John Lachs & Wendy McElroy et al. – Knowledge Products (April 25, 2006)

Bertrand Russell and A.N. Whitehead coauthored a seminal work in logic entitled Principia Mathematica. Russell wrote on virtually every aspect of philosophy, with particular contributions in ethics (where he...

Thomas Aquinas in 90 Minutes

by Paul Strathern & Simon Vance – Blackstone Publishing (June 25, 2005)

We see our age as the greatest in human history, filled with seemingly unending originality. Yet such dynamism is not a necessary characteristic of great eras. Among the most long-lasting and stable civilizations...

Wittgenstein in 90 Minutes

by Paul Strathern & Simon Vance – Blackstone Publishing (June 25, 2005)

If we accept Wittgenstein's word for it, he is the last philosopher. In his view, philosophy in the traditional sense was finished.

Ludwig Wittgenstein was a superb logician who distrusted language and sought...

Plato in 90 Minutes

by Paul Strathern & Simon Vance – Blackstone Publishing (June 25, 2005)

In an age when philosophers had scarcely glimpsed the horizons of the mind, a boy named Aristocles decided to forgo his ambitions as a wrestler. Adopting the nickname Plato, he embarked instead on a life in...

All Too Human

by George Stephanopoulos – Back Bay Books (July 31, 2008)

All Too Human is a new-generation political memoir, written from the refreshing perspective of one who got his hands on the levers of awesome power at an early age. At thirty, the author was at Bill Clinton's...