Big ideas sometimes come from the strangest places. In this wide ranging introduction, James M Russell takes the fear out of philosophy and selects seventy-six works - from Plato, Descartes and Wittgenstein to Philip K Dick and the Moomins as well as contemporary thinkers such as Peter Singer and John Rawls. Dividing into accessible sections - history, contemplation, happiness, and -isms, Russell gives us the lives as well as the lessons of the great thinkers, including a digest of their key ideas. A perfect antidote to the complex life. The topics and books covered include: Traditional Philosophy: The Republic , Plato; The Confessions , St Augustine; The Leviathan , Thomas Hobbes; On Liberty , John Stuart Mill; Philisophical Investigations , Ludwig Wittgenstein; Critique of Pure Reason , Immanuel Kant. Outsiders: Fear and Trembling , Soren Kierkegaard; Beyond Good and Evil , Frederick Nietzsche; The Outsider , Albert Camus; Doors of Perception , Aldous Huxley. Contemplation as Philosophy: The Prophet , Kahil Gibran; Jonathan Livingston Seagull , Richard Bach; Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance , Robert Pirsig; The Tao of Pooh , Benjamin Hoff. The Continental Tradition: The Prison Notebooks , Antonio Gramsci; The History of Sexuality , Michel Foucault; Symbolic Exchange and Death , Jean Baudrillard. How to Live Your Life: The Art of War , Sun Tzu; Maxims, La Rouchefoucauld; Memories, Dreams, Reflections , Carl Jung; On Sexuality , Sigmund Freud; On Becoming a Person , Carl Rogers. Political and Personal Issues: Das Kapital , Karl Marx; Being and Nothingness , Jean Paul Sartre; Gaia , James Lovelock. Modern Philosophy: A Theory of Justice , John Rawls; Darwin's Dangerous Idea , Daniel Dennett; After the Terror , Ted Honderich.