Socrates: A Man for Our Times

A new look at the life of the Greek thinker whose questions proved fundamental to Western philosophy.

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The Googlization of Everything

A look at the company at the center of the Web, and the impact of its ubiquity on our lives.

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Examined Lives

Does philosophy help us to live well?

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Self Comes to Mind

In his latest work, the author of Descartes' Error reconsiders some of his prior thinking about the mind and the brain.

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The Berlin-Baghdad Express

The story of a German-Turkish railroad and Ottoman Empire's entry into World War I eerily foreshadows today's conflicts in the Middle East.

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Exploring Happiness

From the Stoics to the psychology lab, a quest to understand what makes us happy.

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Bomber County

Memoir, history, and personal journey, this book about poetry and the Second World War is a telling, poignant, and singular testament.

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The Philosophical Baby

Alison Gopnik pulls profound questions out of the minds of babes. Read more...

Tocqueville's Discovery of America

Retracing the young French thinker's steps, and thoughts, as he met a brave New World.

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Cro-Magnon

Cro-Magnon interlopers displaced the Neanderthals who once roamed over prehistoric Europe. What made them different?

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Wisdom: From Philosophy to Neuroscience

A. C. Grayling on the quest to find the seat of wisdom in the brain.

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Olympian Mind

The journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson reveal the committed, passionate writer at work.

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Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy

A new work from a Nobel laureate may be the best account of how the global economy crashed -- and how it needs to be repaired. Read more...

When China Rules the World

An argument for the emerging dominance of the world's economy -- and culture -- by the most populous nation on the planet.

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Secrets of the Universe: How We Discovered the Cosmos

A new history of astronomy illuminates the wonders of the skies, and the contributions of those explore them with eyes, telescopes, and radio waves. Read more...

Thucydides: the Reinvention of History

Why a chronicle of the struggle between two Mediterranean city-states still matters. Read more...

Ayn Rand and the World She Made

A visionary of human liberty or a self-serving cult mistress? The enigma of the author of The Fountainhead. Read more...

A Fiery Peace in a Cold War

The counterintuitive history of the arms race, and the men who ran it -- largely in the dark. Read more...

The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom

A mind that leapt over the mysteries of physics, and a soul tormented by visions of failure. Read more...

The Philosophical Baby

A new book by Alison Gopnik pulls profound questions out of the minds of babes. Read more...

Fixing My Gaze

A. C. Grayling on a neuroscientist's attempt to "rewire her own brain." Read more...

Philosophical Page-Turners

Author Charlotte Greig writes in response to A.C. Grayling's column. Read more...

Modernity 1.0: Keith Thomas's The Ends of Life

A new study of 17th-century English values reveals the roots of the modern world. Read more...

Why Evolution Is True

Jerry Coyne's case for the centrality of evolutionary theory is also a wonderful introduction to the subject. Read more...

Sense and Sensibility

Philosopher A.C. Grayling debuts his new column The Thinking Read. Read more...

The Invention of Air: A Story of Science, Revolution, and the Birth of America

The exuberantly inventive career of an Enlightenment genius. Read more...

The Ascent of Money

From clay tablets to credit default swaps. Read more...

William Wilberforce: The Life of the Great Anti-Slave Trade Campaigner

A life of the great British legislator and crusader against the slave trade. Read more...

Ark of the Liberties

Can America still claim to be a leader in the cause of freedom? Read more...

Gandhi and Churchill: The Epic Rivalry that Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age

A look at two of the most influential progeny of Britain?s imperial culture, and how they shaped a century. Read more...

About the Columnist
A. C. Grayling is an author, playwright, reviewer, cultural journalist, and professor of philosophy at London University. The most recent of his many books are Towards the Light of Liberty and The Choice of Hercules. His play Grace was recently performed in New York City.

February 11: Nelson Mandela was released from prison on this day in 1990. The recent anthology Conversations with Myself samples from decades of archived material in an attempt to "give readers access to the Nelson Mandela…

Once held close to the chest and protected by well-understood laws, the valuable information about our lives that we blithely disclose with our every keystroke has the potential…

Books CDs, DVDs to know about now
Alice James

"The moral and philosophical questions that Henry wrote up as fiction and William as science," Jean Strouse writes of her subject's more famous brothers, "Alice simply lived." It took a biographer of sensitivity and brilliance to give that "simply" the profundity it deserves, and the resulting book, now reissued in the peerless NYRB Classics series, is one of the richest life stories you'll ever read.

Midnight in Austenland

The world of Jane Austen's fiction has long been an imaginative playground for writers and readers of a certain stripe. Shannon Hale's Austenland wittily took the next step, setting comic romance in a faux-Pemberly resort for the Darcy-smitten. Her latest returns for more Regency fun, but with a twist: does murder stalk Pembrook Park?

Humble Homes, Simple Shacks...

Childlike retreat? Arts and crafts challenge? Frugal and eco-friendly living option? The notion of the "tiny house" has the surprising potential to fire the imagination. In this exuberant volume of sketches, plans, and commentary, the artist Derek Diedricksen shares his infectious enthusiasm for the idea of the micro-mansion.