Philosophy Books for Casual Readers & Book Clubs
Explore the best philosophy books for casual readers and book clubs. Discover thought-provoking, accessible reads that spark deep discussions and enrich your understanding of life's big questions.
Book
Tao Te Ching
by Lao Tzu
In the hands of Jonathan Star, the eighty-one verses of the Tao Te Ching resound with the elegant, simple images and all-penetrating ideas that have made this ancient work a cornerstone of the world's wisdom literature.
Book
Wittgenstein's Poker
by David Edmonds
On October 25, 1946, in a crowded room in Cambridge, England, the great twentieth-century philosophers Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper came face to face for the first and only time. The meeting -- which lasted ten minutes -- did not go well. Their loud and aggressive confrontation became the stuff of instant legend, but precisely what happened during that brief confrontation remained for decades the subject of intense disagreement. An engaging mix of philosophy, history, biography, and literary detection, Wittgenstein's Poker explores, through the Popper/Wittgenstein confrontation, the history of philosophy in the twentieth century. It evokes the tumult of fin-de-siécle Vienna, Wittgentein's and Popper's birthplace; the tragedy of the Nazi takeover of Austria; and postwar Cambridge University, with its eccentric set of philosophy dons, including Bertrand Russell. At the center of the story stand the two giants of philosophy themselves -- proud, irascible, larger than life -- and spoiling for a fight.
Book
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
by Robert M. Pirsig
"The real cycle you're working on is a cycle called 'yourself.'" One of the most important and influential books of the past half-century, Robert M. Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a powerful, moving, and penetrating examination of how we live and a meditation on how to live better. The narrative of a father on a summer motorcycle trip across America's Northwest with his young son, it becomes a profound personal and philosophical odyssey into life's fundamental questions. A true modern classic, it remains at once touching and transcendent, resonant with the myriad confusions of existence and the small, essential triumphs that propel us forward.
