Ocean State Libraries

"I was living in a fairy story--the kind with sinister overtones and not always a happy ending--in which a young man loves a beautiful maiden who returns his love but is always disappearing into some unknown and mysterious world, about which she will reveal nothing." So John Bayley describes his life with his wife, Iris Murdoch, one of the greatest contemporary writers in the English-speaking world, revered for her works of philosophy and beloved...

British economist and ethical theorist, John Stuart Mill (1806—73), recounts his rigorous tutelage under a domineering father, his mental health crisis at age twenty, and his struggle to regain joy amid self-reflection.

"A history of the British thinkers who developed the Enlightenment-era ideas and ideals that drove the American Revolution"--

"In the fullness of his power and reputation as Lord Chancellor of England, Bacon was impeached by parliament for taking bribes in office, convicted and banished from London and the law courts, At the depth of his fall, at the lowest reach of public disgrace and private agony, Bacon wrote a prayer, confessing to God that he had not used his talents to best advantage." --

"Set in Provence, London, and New York: a daughter's wonderfully evocative and witty memoir of her mother and stepfather--Dee Wells, the glamorous and rebellious American journalist, and A. J. Ayer, the celebrated and worldly Oxford philosopher--and the life they lived at the center of absolutely everything. Gully Wells takes us into the heart of London's liberated intellectual inner circle of the 1960s. Here are Alan Bennett, Isaiah Berlin, Iris...

In this book, Magee tells the story of his own discovery of philosophy and not only makes it come alive but shows its relevance to daily life. Magee is the Carl Sagan of philosophy, the great popularizer of the subject, and author of a major new introductory history, The Story of Philosophy. This book follows the course of Magee's life, exploring philosophers and ideas as he himself encountered them, introducing all the great figures and their ideas,...