Story of Philosophy

I've been disappointed with most books of this kind, but not with this one. The book begins with the ancient Greek philosophers, and runs to modern day, providing a summarization of each philosopher's personal life, contributions to philosophical thought, influences, etc., providing just the right amount of information without losing the reader in the weeds. I'm learning a lot from this book.

The Story of Philosophy is a facinating and highly informative introduction to the history of western philosophy.It is a book that would be fun to read either from start to finish or just skipping around. It is written in a waythat is understandable to readers new to the subject, while not being dumbed down. The book is visually appealing with manyphotographs and illustrations, along with sidebars on nearly every page introducing the reader to subjects relating to the main text. My only complaint is that I think the title should be "The Story of Western Philosophy", because it only lightly covers eastern and arabic philosophy, which is rather odd considering that my copy promonently features the Buddha on the cover. However, it does provide a helpful "For further reading" section that includes works on those subjects. Altogether, this is an excellent book that I am glad to add to my library. I also recommend as a good companion to this book DK's "World Religions" by John Bowker.

This is a very readable although fairly short illustrated history of philosophy, by an extremely knowledgeable author. This s great book to read if you just want an overview of the history of philosophy as well as brief explanations of most of the schools of thought. Magee has written many works on philosophy and has created a couple of BBC series on philosophy. His writing style is very clear and he makes extremely interesting points about the different philosophers and about philosophy in general. There are many digressions and sidebars throughout the book that consider various philosphical points in a very brief manner (for example, "Can the existence of God be proved?", "The power of ideas", and "The Einsteinian revolution"). The book itself - like most Dorling-Kindersley (DK) books I've seen - is extremely well done, a beautiful book that invites browsing.

Fairly Simplistic, but if it Attracts People to Philosophy...then it's a good thing. I'd recommend it to all potential students of philosophy. Better to start here than to jump straight into Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics by Immanuel Kant. It also puts things into historical perspective better than most proper books on philosophy. For example, there's good reason that the British Empiricists began questioning the source of knowledge around the time that the days of the monarchs were beginning to end.

This is an excellent, simple history of philosophy for people (like me) who have little knowledge of the subject and want a clear, easy to remember overview. The format is forty or so chapters, usually four to eight pages long apiece, with interesting illustrations and sidebars, devoted to each important philosopher or philosophic movement from the ancient Greeks to the twentieth century.I have read other books that cover the same ground as this one, but they weren't as clear and were perhaps too technical and detailed for a non-philosopher like me. At any rate, I never retained much of what I read on philosophy until I found this book.

I am taking a class in school, and had checked this book out at the library. I liked it so much, I kept checking it out. So I decided to buy it, which I rarely do. It's got great illustrations, and lots of pictures. The type is easy to read. Most importantly, it seems to be a complete history of the evolution of philosophy.

My son liked it but didn't say much more about it. He's a philosophy buff and learned some stuff from it, though.

At first sight, this book may appear as a colorful, photo-packed elementary book on philosophy but it is much more. Bryan Magee elegantly and, most important, fairly presents the philosophers, their beliefs, their influence, and the 'eternal' questions they left us.Above the excellent summarization and presentation, the great feature of the book is he clearly traces the development of ideas through generations of philosophers. Even for someone like me, who has taken philosophy courses at University level, this book is a great way to get a quick overview. The pictures and side boxes also add the historical context to the formation of the philosophers' ideas.