• The Best Simone de Beauvoir Books - Philosophical Writings by Simone de Beauvoir
  • The Best Simone de Beauvoir Books - All Men Are Mortal by Simone de Beauvoir
  • The Best Simone de Beauvoir Books - America Day By Day by Simone de Beauvoir
  • The Best Simone de Beauvoir Books - The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir
  • The Best Simone de Beauvoir Books - A Very Easy Death by Simone de Beauvoir

The Best Simone de Beauvoir Books, recommended by Kate Kirkpatrick

Simone de Beauvoir is remembered today as the pioneering feminist author of The Second Sex and a close companion of Jean Paul Sartre. But the scope of her intellectual contribution has long been underestimated, argues her latest biographer Kate Kirkpatrick, who offers an introduction to the landscape of Beauvoir’s works, from fiction to philosophy to life writing.

  • The best books on Hannah Arendt - The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt
  • The best books on Hannah Arendt - The Human Condition by Hannah Arendt
  • The best books on Hannah Arendt - Men in Dark Times by Hannah Arendt
  • The best books on Hannah Arendt - Thinking Without a Banister by Hannah Arendt
  • The best books on Hannah Arendt - Hannah Arendt: For Love of the World by Elisabeth Young-Bruehl

The best books on Hannah Arendt, recommended by Samantha Rose Hill

Unimpressed by the response of philosophers to the rise of Nazism in her native Germany, Hannah Arendt rejected the notion of being a philosopher and said she was a political theorist. Samantha Rose Hill, writer and formerly assistant director of the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College, talks us through Hannah Arendt’s life and work—and suggests which books to read if we want to learn more about her and her ideas.

  • The Best Mary Wollstonecraft Books - Reflections on the Revolution in France by Edmund Burke
  • The Best Mary Wollstonecraft Books - A Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful by Edmund Burke
  • The Best Mary Wollstonecraft Books - A Vindication of the Rights of Men and A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft, edited by Sylvana Tomaselli
  • The Best Mary Wollstonecraft Books - Letters written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark by Mary Wollstonecraft
  • The Best Mary Wollstonecraft Books - The Theory of Moral Sentiments by Adam Smith

The Best Mary Wollstonecraft Books, recommended by Sylvana Tomaselli

Mary Wollstonecraft lived by her pen and wrote trenchant critiques of the role of women and marriage in late 18th century British society. She died aged 38, a few days after giving birth to her second daughter, Mary Shelley. She is often remembered for writing the Vindication of the Rights of Woman, but it was not in fact her best book, says Cambridge intellectual historian Sylvana Tomaselli. Here, she recommends books to read to get a good understanding of the extraordinary Mary Wollstonecraft, and the writers she was both influenced by and reacting against.

  • The Best George Eliot Books - Scenes of Clerical Life by George Eliot
  • The Best George Eliot Books - Adam Bede by George Eliot
  • The Best George Eliot Books - The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot
  • The Best George Eliot Books - Middlemarch by George Eliot
  • The Best George Eliot Books - George Eliot's Life, as Related in Her Letters and Journals by John Walter Cross

The Best George Eliot Books, recommended by Philip Davis

George Eliot is all but synonymous with Victorian realism; for D H Lawrence, she was the first novelist to start ‘putting all the action inside.’ Here, Philip Davis, author of The Transferred Life of George Eliot, selects the best books by or about one of the greatest novelists of all time: ‘If you want to read literature that sets out to create a holding ground for raw human material—for human struggles, difficulties, and celebrations—read George Eliot’

  • The Best Iris Murdoch Books - The Bell by Iris Murdoch
  • The Best Iris Murdoch Books - The Black Prince by Iris Murdoch
  • The Best Iris Murdoch Books - A Word Child by Iris Murdoch
  • The Best Iris Murdoch Books - Existentialists and Mystics: Writings on Philosophy and Literature by Iris Murdoch
  • The Best Iris Murdoch Books - The Philosopher's Pupil by Iris Murdoch

The Best Iris Murdoch Books, recommended by Miles Leeson

Iris Murdoch gained fame as a novelist, a philosopher and, perhaps most prominently of all, for her public and rapid decline (and posthumous immortalization by her husband John Bayley) after an early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease. But now, a hundred years on from her birth, the attention is returning back to her work: Miles Leeson, Director of the Iris Murdoch Centre at the University of Chichester, recommends what books to read from her canon of 27 novels.

  • Ethics for Artificial Intelligence Books - Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence by Kate Crawford
  • Ethics for Artificial Intelligence Books - The Ethical Algorithm: The Science of Socially Aware Algorithm Design by Aaron Roth & Michael Kearns
  • Ethics for Artificial Intelligence Books - Human Compatible: Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Control by Stuart Russell
  • Ethics for Artificial Intelligence Books - The Technological Singularity by Murray Shanahan
  • Ethics for Artificial Intelligence Books - Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right From Wrong by Wendell Wallach and Colin Allen
  • Ethics for Artificial Intelligence Books - 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke

Ethics for Artificial Intelligence Books, recommended by Paula Boddington

Advances in artificial intelligence pose a myriad of ethical questions, but the most incisive thinking on this subject says more about humans than it does about machines, says Paula Boddington, philosopher and author of a recent AI ethics textbook. We first spoke to Paula in 2017—a long time ago in a fast-moving field. This week we caught up with her to find out what’s happened since then and which new books have taken the conversation over ethics and AI further.

  • The Best Books on the Philosophy of Travel - Mountain Gloom And Mountain Glory: The Development of the Aesthetics of the Infinite by Marjorie Hope Nicolson
  • The Best Books on the Philosophy of Travel - Letters written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark by Mary Wollstonecraft
  • The Best Books on the Philosophy of Travel - Walden by Henry David Thoreau
  • The Best Books on the Philosophy of Travel - The Art of Travel by Alain de Botton
  • The Best Books on the Philosophy of Travel - How to Talk About Places You've Never Been: On the Importance of Armchair Travel by Michele Hutchison (translator) & Pierre Bayard

The Best Books on the Philosophy of Travel, recommended by Emily Thomas

At its best, travel broadens our minds, expands our horizons and allows us to see the world we live in differently. But it has also played an important role in the history of philosophy. Emily Thomas, author of The Meaning of Travel: Philosophers Abroad, explores the connections between her two passions—philosophy and travel—at a moment when most of us are unable to leave our houses: perhaps the perfect moment to reflect on travel’s significance for human beings.