Philosophy Books

Chomsky for Beginners gives an easy way to meet Noam Chomsky, one of the most important intellectuals of our time. Chomsky became famous by his breakthrough in linguistics, and then as one of the greatest opponents to the Vietnam war.

The technique of the book is very unusual: it is a documentary comic book. The text is very informative and at same time very readable, and the humorous illustrations makes reading this book a real fun.

Here are more philosophy books in the "for Beginners" series, using the same style of documentary comic book:
Structuralism and Poststructuralism for Beginners
Derrida for Beginners: About Jacques Derrida and Deconstruction.
Foucault for Beginners: An excellent introduction to the philosophy of Michel Foucault.

Philosophy in cartoons? Some say it's impossible, but each book in this series delivers an accurate and concise description of the basic concepts of the philosophical theory. As much as you understand the theory, you gain more pleasure from the comics.

The Philosophers: Their Lives and the Nature of Their Thought gives us an opportunity to meet the human side of the main philosophers since the sixteenth century. The book tells the biography of each philosopher since his childhood, and finds the connection between the biography and the philosophy.

Bryan Magee is a well known british populariser of philosophy, and a former Labour MP (those british people know how to choose their Members of Parliament). His book, The Great Philosophers: An Introduction to Western Philosophy, is an elegant and accessible discussion between the author and the leading contemporary philosophers.

Spinoza and Other Heretics: The Marrano of Reason and Spinoza and Other Heretics: The Adventures of Immanence. This two volumes book give a full picture of Spinoza and his place in western philosophy. The first volume describes Spinoza among his contemporaries. The second volume describes the influence of Spinoza on other philosophers, from Kant to Marx. Don't let the name of my bookstore mislead you: there are no jokes in this book. This is a very readable book, but also a really serious book. You don't have to be a philosopher to read this book. If you are open minded enough, you will find great satisfaction in reading this book, written by Yirmiyahu Yovel, one of the best known Spinoza researchers.

The Mind's I is an anthology of essays and stories about mind and thinking. Each chapter is followed by reflections of the editors, computer scientist Douglas R. Hofstadter and the philosopher Daniel C. Dennett. The book contains Alan Turing's famous essay "Computer Machinery and Intelligence", science fiction stories by Stanislav Lem, the essay "Minds, Brains, and Programs" by John Searle, some witty dialogs by Hofstadter, and much more. Like Hofstadter's other books, this book combines science and art, natural thinking and artificial intelligence.

If you didn't find any interesting book in my recommendations, you can start here a search in the whole catalog of Amazon.com, Earth's Biggest Bookstore. Write the name of the author or the name of the book you wish to find, and click on the "Search" button.