Great Thinkers A-Z

If you just can't remember what you learned in college about Gottlob Frege or Gilbert Ryle, this is the place to turn to for help. The editors' selections are both comprehensive and somewhat idiosyncratic, as they admit in their introduction: not every great thinker is included in the 100 covered here, but rather the most representative of all major schools of thought, from Pythagoras to postmodernism. This is not philosophy for dummies--Kant will never be simple--but the author of each segment boils the thinker's ideas down to a point where they can be fairly well absorbed. Most useful to the student who needs a quick reference on these thinkers and their ideas, this volume also provides lists of suggested reading for those who wish to use it as a starting point for further investigation.