🧲 Books like this
The Cave and the Light: Plato Versus Aristotle, and the Struggle for the Soul of Western Civilization
Arthur Herman · back to the book
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorThe History of Sexuality, Volume 2: The Use of Pleasure
Michel Foucault · 304 pages
Doubt: A History: The Great Doubters and Their Legacy of Innovation from Socrates and Jesus to Thomas Jefferson and Emily Dickinson
Jennifer Michael Hecht · 551 pages
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind
Julian Jaynes · 486 pages
At the heart of this classic, seminal book is Julian Jaynes's still-controversial thesis that human consciousness did not begin far back in animal evolution but instead is a learned process that came about only three thousand years ago and is still developing. The implications of this revolutionary scientific paradigm extend into virtually every aspect of our psychology, our history and culture, o
The Trial of Socrates
I.F. Stone · 282 pages
In unravelling the long-hidden issues of the most famous free speech case of all time, noted author I.F. Stone ranges far and wide over Roman as well as Greek history to present an engaging and rewarding introduction to classical antiquity and its relevance to society today.The New York Timescalled this national best-seller an "intellectual thriller."
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
Yuval Noah Harari · 456 pages
From a renowned historian comes a groundbreaking narrative of humanity’s creation and evolution—a #1 international bestseller—that explores the ways in which biology and history have defined us and enhanced our understanding of what it means to be “human.” One hundred thousand years ago, at least six different species of humans inhabited Earth. Yet today there is only one—homo sapiens. What hap
Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter
Thomas Cahill · 352 pages
In the fourth volume of the acclaimed Hinges of History series, Thomas Cahill brings his characteristic wit and style to a fascinating tour of ancient Greece. The Greeks invented everything from Western warfare to mystical prayer, from logic to statecraft. Many of their achievements, particularly in art and philosophy, are widely celebrated; other important innovations and accomplishments, however
The Greek Way
Edith Hamilton · 327 pages
A study of the intellectual life of Greece at the peak of its achievements. The author interprets the literature, art, and philosophy of the Greeks and discusses what this heritage means to the world today.
The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason
Charles Freeman · 470 pages
How the early Christian Church bent the intellectual climate of the Mediterranean world from one of active and questioning inquiry to an encouragement of the subordination of the mind to authority and acceptance of incomprehensibility as the will of God.
The Origin of Satan: How Christians Demonized Jews, Pagans and Heretics
Elaine Pagels · 214 pages
Who is Satan in the New Testament, and what is the evil that he represents? In this groundbreaking book, Elaine Pagels, Princeton's distinguished historian of religion, traces the evolution of Satan from its origins in the Hebrew Bible, where Satan is at first merely obstructive, to the New Testament, where Satan becomes the Prince of Darkness, the bitter enemy of God and man, evil incarnate. In
The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future
Riane Eisler · 261 pages
"In prehistorical times, Eisler argues, women and men lived together in egalitarian communities devoted to nurturance; with the imposition of male domination, female values gave way to creeds of hierarchy, aggression, power, obedience. Eisler, a futurist, posits a new society based on the recovery of more humane values."--Library journal (6/1/85).
The Evolution of God
Robert Wright · 567 pages
In this sweeping narrative that takes us from the Stone Age to the Information Age, Robert Wright unveils a hidden pattern that the great monotheistic faiths have followed as they have evolved. Through the prisms of archaeology, theology, and evolutionary psychology, Wright's findings overturn basic assumptions about Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and are sure to cause controversy. He explains
The Beginnings of Western Science: The European Scientific Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context, Prehistory to A.D. 1450
David C. Lindberg · 455 pages
Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero
James Romm · 290 pages
Explores the moral struggles, political intrigues and violent vendettas that enmeshed Seneca, the ancient Roman writer and philosopher, in the brutal daily lives of the imperial family and the regime of his student, Nero.
The Story of Civilization (11 Volume Set)
Will Durant, Ariel Durant
A Short History of Progress
Ronald Wright · 211 pages
Palaeolithic hunters who learnt how to kill two mammoths instead of one had made progress. Those who learnt how to kill 200 by driving a whole herd over a cliff had made too much. Many of the great ruins that grace the deserts and jungles of the earth are monuments to progress traps, the headstones of civilisations which fell victim to their own success. The twentieth-century´s runaway growth has
How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee
Bart D. Ehrman · 416 pages
New York Times bestselling author and Bible expert Bart Ehrman reveals how Jesus’s divinity became dogma in the first few centuries of the early church. The claim at the heart of the Christian faith is that Jesus of Nazareth was, and is, God. But this is not what the original disciples believed during Jesus’s lifetime—and it is not what Jesus claimed about himself. How Jesus Became God tells th
The Fate of Empires and Search for Survival
John Bagot Glubb · 52 pages
Sophie's World
Jostein Gaarder · 456 pages
The protagonists are Sophie Amundsen, a 14-year-old girl, and Alberto Knox, her philosophy teacher. The novel chronicles their metaphysical relationship as they study Western philosophy from its beginnings to the present. A bestseller in Norway.
Cyrus the Great: The Arts of Leadership and War
Xenophon · 320 pages
A History of Philosophy, Vol. 1: Greece and Rome, From the Pre-Socratics to Plotinus
Frederick Charles Copleston · 544 pages