A review by zuomiriam
The History of Philosophy by A.C. Grayling

5.0

An exceedingly impressive piece of scholarly work. Grayling lays out dense, often obscure ideas in a structured and largely accessible way that invites you to engage with the material. This book offers a fairly comprehensive view of the "big names" in philosophy - primarily metaphysics, epistemology, logic, and ethics - starting from Thales; it presupposes no background in philosophy, nor does it wander into theology or what we now consider science (but for much of history was also included under the umbrella of philosophy). The sections on Western philosophy are much more in-depth than those on non-Western ones, as that's where Grayling's expertise lies, but the book as a whole offers a compelling entry point and invites further studying. It does take a little while to get through, and significantly longer if you really want to retain what Grayling writes, but I firmly think it's worth the effort.