From back in the old days when the rich hot guy trying to rape the poor cute girl, which will then ruin her life and reputation, but "he just has to have her" was a HOT read.... you remember.....back in the old days....

"the meeting of two people is like a chemical reaction; both are transformed." [paraphrase]. I sometimes think that i carry a part of those people who were important in my life all the time. Not AT the same time, thankfully, but they're there.

Huh, I always found Descartes easy to follow... Granted, I am a "Word salad" kinda guy myself, soooo...

Oh no, I’ve just bought this.

I agree with Christine....... Ballard wasn't that good

Why would she read it if she doesn’t like philosophy? I’ve never read “On Liberty”, so I can’t say if it’s good or bad, but it seems kind of counter intuitive to read something on a topic that you hate...

Idk, I found Frankenstein fun to read.

Very telling how the Pope just abolished the whole concept of ''Limbo'' (the place where good people go who haven't had the good fortune to actually become Christians because they were born B.C.), saying that St.Augustine ''just made that up'' and that it was never part of Catholic doctrine. Like heck. You should have heard my catechism teacher threaten me with hellfire and damnation when I said the whole idea is just garbage. Don't just dump ''Limbo'' but everything else Augustine wrote.

I've read about 1/6 of Gravity's Rainbow and thought "F this"! The review however is very on point considering the loosely threaded wackyness of the books content (basing on how far I've gotten of course)!

Lawful evil.

No Calvin? Aw :(

Which book?

I agree - I seriously wonder whether Russell was just impressed with the dude's money

MIght not both be true?

Nausea. Read it.

Heidegger was a menace. You can't read German philosophy after 1450 without knowing about the lives of the men themselves. THEN it all makes sense (i.e. that they were menaces)

It's not meant to be - it's a (very personal) reaction to the BIG names in philosophy, and an abiding reason not to take academic philosophy seriously

But do go back to vol.1 and read all the statistics on tuberculosis. Fascinating, actually.

What was the book?

Dear old Eric - everyone's favourite stinky-overcoat Socialist

Just the third most cited book in social sciences. "Silly theories" meaning free education and introducing critical thinking in education. Good thing Paul Bard is a genius who knows better. God forbid people should be educated, we wouldn't want them to think. It's do-gooderism.

"Irrelevant to our times".... quick everyone stop reading anything NOT written in the last decade or so - it's irrelevant to our times! (Crossref Gatsby, Shakespeare, that brilliant comment that To Kill A Mockingbird doesn't work becaus now we have DNA evidence...). That's it, I'm done reading this list.

Even I didn't do enough drugs to think Burroughs was good.

When my kid was in 6th grade, he read "Young People's History of the United States", a annotated, illustrated version aimed at his age group. I appreciated that version because that is the right age to start teaching to think critically instead of just accepting facts about the shiny side of history. Its ok to question authority and look behind the curtain to see things like slavery and corruption so we can avoid past errors.

Wow. Talk about not getting the point.