Recommendations you can check.
British philosopher and writer; co-host with David Edmonds of the podcast Philosophy Bites; author of Philosophy: The Basics (1992) and A Little History of Philosophy (2011).
24 things
Death in a Shallow PondBook David Edmonds
Death in a Shallow Pond is also about a single thought experiment, Peter Singer’s famous thought experiment about a child apparently drowning in a shallow pool of water while nobody else is around.
Five Books interview: the best books on The Best Philosophy Books of 2025
2025-12-05·fivebooks.com ↗
How to Say NoBook Diogenes and the Cynics, translated by Mark Usher
Diogenes the Cynic was a real character and this book, How to Say No, is in the Princeton series ‘Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers‘, which was commissioned by the editor Rob Tempio.
Five Books interview: the best books on The Best Philosophy Books of 2022
2022-12-15·fivebooks.com ↗
Looking for TheophrastusBook Laura Beatty
The book is called Looking for Theophrastus and it’s by Laura Beatty.
Five Books interview: the best books on The Best Philosophy Books of 2022
2022-12-15·fivebooks.com ↗
Thinking to Some PurposeBook Susan Stebbing
Which makes the point that books like Thinking to Some Purpose have a huge potential effect on society.
Five Books interview: the best books on The Best Philosophy Books of 2022
2022-12-15·fivebooks.com ↗
FreeBook Lea Ypi
There’s a passage near the end of Free where Ypi describes how this book was originally going to be an overtly philosophical one about overlapping ideas of freedom in liberal and socialist traditions, but that as soon as she started writing it, the abstract ideas turned into people she knew, people who were the product of social relations for which they were not responsible.
Five Books interview: the best books on The Best Philosophy Books of 2021
2021-11-30·fivebooks.com ↗
RepublicBook Plato
Now, that doesn’t give you any idea of why it’s called Republic.
Five Books interview: the best books on Key Philosophical Texts in the Western Canon
2021-07-02·fivebooks.com ↗
On LibertyBook John Stuart Mill
On Liberty was published in 1859, the same year as the Origin of Species but wasn’t entirely eclipsed by it.
Five Books interview: the best books on Key Philosophical Texts in the Western Canon
2021-07-02·fivebooks.com ↗
Philosophical InvestigationsBook Ludwig Wittgenstein
These ideas then reach their most popular version in the Philosophical Investigations, this posthumously published book.
Five Books interview: the best books on Key Philosophical Texts in the Western Canon
2021-07-02·fivebooks.com ↗
FactfulnessBook Hans Rosling
His book Factfulness, which was published posthumously—his son and daughter-in-law completed the book—is very optimistic, so completely different in tone from Kahneman’s.
Five Books interview: the best books on Critical Thinking
2020-12-04·fivebooks.com ↗
Black Box ThinkingBook Matthew Syed
The title, Black Box Thinking, comes from the black boxes which are standardly included in every passenger aircraft, so that if an accident occurs there’s a recording of the flight data and a recording of the audio communications as the plane goes down.
Five Books interview: the best books on Critical Thinking
2020-12-04·fivebooks.com ↗
The Art of Thinking ClearlyBook Rolf Dobelli
The Art of Thinking Clearly is a very short and punchy book, while Tom’s is longer, and more of a textbook.
Five Books interview: the best books on Critical Thinking
2020-12-04·fivebooks.com ↗
Critical ThinkingBook Tom Chatfield
Of the books I’ve discussed, the ones that are most obviously aimed at that are Black Box Thinking, the Dobelli book, and Tom Chatfield’s Critical Thinking.
Five Books interview: the best books on Critical Thinking
2020-12-04·fivebooks.com ↗
MetazoaBook Peter Godfrey-Smith
This new book, Metazoa, is about animal minds and the birth of consciousness.
Five Books interview: the best books on The Best Philosophy Books of 2020
2020-11-25·fivebooks.com ↗
The Meaning of TravelBook Emily Thomas
Emily Thomas’s original and fun book The Meaning of Travel is my top pick in a year when travel is going to be difficult.
Five Books interview: the best books on Summer Reading: Philosophy Books
2020-06-24·fivebooks.com ↗
Mean GirlBook Lisa Duggan
If you want to understand what’s lurking behind the cruelty we’re seeing in the US political arena, try Mean Girl: Ayn Rand and the Culture of Greed by Lisa Duggan.
Five Books interview: the best books on Summer Reading: Philosophy Books
2020-06-24·fivebooks.com ↗
How to Live a Good LifeBook Daniel Kaufman, Massimo Pigliucci & Skye C Cleary
An antidote to Rand’s is How to Live a Good Life, which is a collection of fifteen essays about practical moral philosophy from Buddhism to humanism, taking in Stoicism, Christian ethics, Pragmatism, Existentialism and other schools along the way.
Five Books interview: the best books on Summer Reading: Philosophy Books
2020-06-24·fivebooks.com ↗
Free SpeechBook Timothy Garton Ash
First published in 2016, but getting more relevant every day, Timothy Garton Ash’s Free Speech: Ten Principles for a Connected World is the best book I’ve read on the topic by far, written with great elegance, and filled with fascinating examples.
Five Books interview: the best books on Summer Reading: Philosophy Books
2020-06-24·fivebooks.com ↗
The PlagueBook Albert Camus
Finally, it may seem a cliché to pick this book, but Albert Camus’s The Plague has justifiably become a bestseller this year.
Five Books interview: the best books on Summer Reading: Philosophy Books
2020-06-24·fivebooks.com ↗
Becoming BeauvoirBook Kate Kirkpatrick
Yes, let’s start with what I think is a remarkable book, Becoming Beauvoir by Kate Kirkpatrick.
Five Books interview: the best books on The Best Philosophy Books of 2019
2019-11-29·fivebooks.com ↗
Socrates in LoveBook Armand D'Angour
I found Socrates in Love completely fascinating.
Five Books interview: the best books on The Best Philosophy Books of 2019
2019-11-29·fivebooks.com ↗
A Theory of the AphorismBook Andrew Hui
It’s A Theory of the Aphorism: From Confucius to Twitter by Andrew Hui.
Five Books interview: the best books on The Best Philosophy Books of 2019
2019-11-29·fivebooks.com ↗
The GrasshopperBook Bernard Suits
It’s called The Grasshopper because the central character is, in fact, a grasshopper!
Five Books interview: the best books on The Best Introductions to Philosophy
2018-07-18·fivebooks.com ↗
Why Buddhism is TrueBook Robert Wright
Some people might wonder why I’m choosing Why Buddhism is True as a philosophy book, because it sounds like it’s not quite that.
Five Books interview: the best books on The Best Philosophy Books of 2017
2018-04-13·fivebooks.com ↗
The PathBook Christine Gross-Loh & Michael Puett
The Path is very interesting because it’s written for a popular audience.
Five Books interview: the best books on The Best Philosophy Books of 2016
2016-11-28·fivebooks.com ↗
Every entry is a verbatim quote and a link to the public post it came from. Nothing is paraphrased. If it is not on record somewhere public, it is not here.
The verdict is what they actually said: loved and liked are explicit; recommended means they told others to get it; uses means they only say they use it; read is a book on their public shelf with no verdict; mixed and disliked are kept too.
A dashed affiliate link, sponsored or their own label means the post disclosed a relationship. It is shown, never hidden.
The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is for its kind of thing.
The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is, for its kind of thing. Fully green is recent. It drains a quarter at a time as the post gets older, and is empty once it reads as dated.
What counts as old depends on the thing. A laptop praised four years ago has been replaced twice; a book loved twenty years ago is probably still loved. The shading is gone after about:
Stripes mean the post carries no date and the date shown is an estimate. No date at all, no shading.