Very Short Introductions, published by Oxford University Press
A Little History series, published by Yale University Press
Columbia University's Columbia Global Reports
“Brief informed surveys of complicated subjects are always helpful so I was pleased to see a new book in the Yale University Press Little Histories series: art critic Charlotte Mullions taking on 100,000 years of art history in A Little History of Art. Theoretically aimed at young adults, these books are great for older adults too.” Read more...
Notable Nonfiction of Spring 2022
Sophie Roell, Journalist
A Little History of Philosophy
by Nigel Warburton
It may be true of all subjects, but it's particularly true of philosophy that it's hard to understand any of it until you know quite a lot about it. Even a book for teenagers, like the 1995 bestseller Sophie's World, is extremely hard to follow if you really are a beginner. What's nice about Nigel Warburton's A Little History of Philosophy is that, as the title suggests, it takes a historical approach. That makes it a lot easier to follow what's going on. It has short chapters on all the big names in Western philosophy—and their basic ideas—over the past two millennia, from Socrates and Plato through to Peter Singer, the Australian utilitarian philosopher who only just retired from Princeton University.
A Little History of Philosophy is also very nice to listen to as an audiobook. By the end you'll know your Kant from your Kierkegaard, your Spinoza from your Schopenhauer and your Aristotle from your Arendt—all in just 7.5 hours of listening!
Ovid: A Very Short Introduction
by Llewelyn Morgan
🏆 A Five Books Book of the Year
Part of the Very Short Introductions series
“This one is a really loving account of Ovid, with a very simple structure. It just takes you through his major works, with the Metamorphoses obviously at the centre. It’s also, to a certain extent, a meditation on exile. Ovid is one of the great figures of exile. It’s very good on that perspective. It’s a wonderful little book. I can’t think of a better introduction to the work of this figure who is, arguably, the single most influential poet of antiquity.” Read more...
The Best History Books of 2020
Paul Lay, Historian
“Over recent years, television has got a bit more accurate in the procedural sense, because there are so many forensic science courses—people believe they know about managing a crime scene, cordoning things off, all that kind of stuff. But the truth of the matter is that only a tiny number of people have ever been to a crime scene or been in a forensic science lab. Only a tiny number of people have ever actually been in a court, let alone given evidence. People fill these gaps with their imaginations, and this imagination has just gone wild in the last twenty years, and a lot of it is just untrue.” Read more...
The best books on Forensic Science
Jim Fraser, Medical Scientist
Alexander the Great: A Very Short Introduction
by Hugh Bowden
Part of the Very Short Introductions series
“Alexander was the son of Philip of Macedon and, while in earlier periods, Macedonia had been on the edges of the Greek world, during Alexander’s childhood Philip had made it into the most significant power in Greece…Macedonia was, effectively, set up as a kingdom in the late sixth century BC, when the Persians under King Darius I invaded northern Greece…The Macedonian monarchy was modelled, to some extent, on Persian practices or the practices of other monarchies that emulated Persia. That suggests that the huge contrast between Greece on one hand and Persia on the other, which is what Greek historians tended to focus on, and which modern scholars also often assume to be the case, wasn’t there quite so much in reality.” Read more...
The best books on Alexander the Great
Hugh Bowden, Historian