Here are 100 books that Why Socrates Died fans have personally recommended if you like
Why Socrates Died.
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My Democracybook was the summation of my views to that date (2018) on the strengths and weaknesses of democracy as a political system, in both its ancient and its modern forms. I’d been an activist and advocate of democracy since my undergraduate days (at Oxford, in the late 1960s – interesting times!). As I was writing the book the world of democracy suddenly took unexpected, and to me undesirable turns, not least in the United States and my own U.K. An entire issue of an English-language Italian political-philosophy journal was devoted to the book in 2019, and in 2021 a Companionto the reception of Athenian democracy in subsequent epochs was dedicated to me.
I have collaborated with Bettany over many years—in her scholarly documentary filmmaking, including programmes on Socrates of Athens (469-399). Socrates never wrote or published in written form a word of his philosophy, yet through his immediate and succeeding disciples (above all Plato and Aristotle) has been hugely influential. But was he a democrat, as his fellow Athenians understood that term? In 399 a jury of 501 of his peers, chosen randomly by lot, delivered their resounding—negative—verdict, and condemned him to death by hemlock poison for being undemocratically irreligious and for teaching his pupils undemocratic values. Plato violently disagreed, and the debate over Socrates has continued ever since. Since it can be made to appear that he was convicted by an illiberal jury on grounds of his use of (democratic) freedom of speech, his condemnation has often been used as a stick to beat the ‘tyranny of…
We think the way we do because Socrates thought the way he did; in his unwavering commitment to truth and in the example of his own life, he set the standard for all subsequent Western philosophy. And yet, for twenty-five centuries, he has remained an enigma: a man who left no written legacy and about whom everything we know is hearsay, gleaned from the writings of Plato, Xenophon and Aristophanes. Now Bettany Hughes gives us an unprecedented, brilliantly vivid portrait of Socrates and of his homeland, Athens in its Golden Age.
His life spanned “seventy of the busiest, most wonderful…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I have studied the ancient world for over 50 years and have found that there are always new things to discover. Everyone thought that all that was known about Socrates had already been said, so I was excited to discover new evidence for his relationship with Aspasia - a woman of extraordinary influence and intellect - hiding in plain sight. I am a Professor of Classics at Oxford University and Fellow and Tutor in Classics at Jesus College, Oxford.
Plato’s scintillating dialogue on the meaning of Love (as purveyed by a group of fifth-century Athenians including Socrates) is one of the key biographical texts about the philosopher. Allan Bloom provides an insightful essay on the central notion of the dialogue attributed to the ‘clever woman’ Diotima: the Ladder of Love.
Plato, Allan Bloom wrote, is "the most erotic of philosophers," and his Symposium is one of the greatest works on the nature of love ever written. This new edition brings together the English translation of the renowned Plato scholar and translator, Seth Benardete, with two illuminating commentaries on it: Benardete's "On Plato's Symposium" and Allan Bloom's provocative essay, "The Ladder of Love." In the Symposium, Plato recounts a drinking party following an evening meal, where the guests include the poet Aristophanes, the drunken Alcibiades, and, of course, the wise Socrates. The revelers give their views on the timeless topics of…
I have studied the ancient world for over 50 years and have found that there are always new things to discover. Everyone thought that all that was known about Socrates had already been said, so I was excited to discover new evidence for his relationship with Aspasia - a woman of extraordinary influence and intellect - hiding in plain sight. I am a Professor of Classics at Oxford University and Fellow and Tutor in Classics at Jesus College, Oxford.
This set of scholarly essays on the learned pupil of Aristotle, Plato’s successor, raises fascinating questions about the nature of Socrates in his youth. Two important chapters (by Schorn and Huffman) consider evidence for Socrates’ early life that is rarely touched upon by traditional accounts.
Aristoxenus of Tarentum was reported to have been bitterly disappointed when Theophrastus was chosen instead of him to succeed Aristotle as the head of the Peripatetic School. He had a truly phenomenal output of some 453 volumes, most of which survive only in fragments. He was the most famous music theorist in antiquity and came to be referred to simply as "the musician." In addition, he was a founder of Greek biography and wrote the life histories of Pythagoras, Archytas, Socrates, and Plato among others.
This volume includes eleven selections, which are almost evenly divided between his work in music…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
I have studied the ancient world for over 50 years and have found that there are always new things to discover. Everyone thought that all that was known about Socrates had already been said, so I was excited to discover new evidence for his relationship with Aspasia - a woman of extraordinary influence and intellect - hiding in plain sight. I am a Professor of Classics at Oxford University and Fellow and Tutor in Classics at Jesus College, Oxford.
This book provides a series of translations of ancient texts relating to the life of Socrates, raising questions about his earlier trajectory among other things. The scattered sources gathered in this volume tell a very different story about the philosopher from that normally obtained by concentrating almost exclusively on his trial and death.
Socrates (469 399 B.C.) is one of history's most enigmatic and intriguing figures. He is often considered the father of Western philosophy, yet the four most famous accounts we have of him present a contradictory, confusing picture.
Just who was Socrates? Was he Plato's brilliant philosopher, at times confounding and infuriating, morally serious and yet ironic; the ever-worldly man, sometime mystic, and uncommon martyr? Or did Plato conflate Socrates' views with his own startling genius, as Aristotle suggests? Was Socrates instead the less impressive, more mundane man whose commonsense impressed the laconic Xenophon? Or could Socrates have been the charlatan,…
As a child, I was always drawn to stories told through both words and illustrations. Why should that have to end in adulthood? Spoiler: it doesn’t, because there are SO many incredible graphic memoirs and novels written with adult audiences in mind. As a graphic memoirist myself, I love to see how other artists explore the form. I share recommendations in this genre every month in my newsletter, Haley Wrote This.
I grew up as a competitive swimmer and struggled to put words to some of the feelings I had around being a female athlete, especially given how disconnected I felt from the history of women’s sports. This book hits both of those topics as the author shares her experience as a soccer player—to the point that I had to put down the book every once in a while and just sigh with relief.
Plus, the historical look at Title Nine was so informative and, quite frankly, shocking.
"[R]eaders will certainly want to linger on the beautiful depictions of birds, people and scenes from her life. She weaves in historical context in graceful and necessary ways."
A beautifully illustrated coming-of-age graphic memoir chronicling how sports shaped one young girl’s life and changed women’s history forever.
Growing up playing on a top national soccer team in the 1980s, Kelcey Ervick and her teammates didn’t understand the change they represented. Title IX was enacted in 1972 with little fanfare, but to seismic effect; between then and now, girls’ participation in organized sports has…
My first computer was an early IBM PC back when all my friends had Commodores they used for gaming. Not being able to share their games meant I had to do something else, so I read the Introduction to Basic book that came in the box. I’ve been coding, reading about coding, writing about coding, teaching about coding, and talking about coding ever since. The world of technology moves so fast that it is hard to keep up. If you’ve taken one of my courses or listened to The Real Python Podcast, I hope you’ve heard about my passion for the topic.
Most of the code I write and use is open source. As a programmer, it is easy to think “open source means free.” I didn’t think much about it until one of the companies I worked at got acquired, and we had to audit our licenses.
The big company that bought us was very particular about which licenses were compatible with their needs. That was when I realized I needed to understand this stuff better. Rosen does a great job of teaching what is otherwise legalese in plain-spoken, easy-to-understand language. This book taught me why I choose the licenses I do rather than picking blindly.
"I have studied Rosen's book in detail and am impressed with its scope and content. I strongly recommend it to anybody interested in the current controversies surrounding open source licensing." -John Terpstra, Samba.org; cofounder, Samba-Team"Linux and open source software have forever altered the computing landscape. The important conversations no longer revolve around the technology but rather the business and legal issues. Rosen's book is must reading for anyone using or providing open source solutions." -Stuart Open Source Development LabsA Complete Guide to the Law of Open Source for Developers, Managers, and Lawyers
Now that open source software is blossoming around…
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
I am fascinated by how gender and sex, characteristics of our beings that we take to be the most intimate and personal, are just as subject to external forces as anything else in history. I have written about the cultivation of masculinity in college fraternities, the history of young people and the age of consent to marriage, and about a same-sex couple who lived publicly as “father and son” in order to be together. My most recent book is a biography of an abortion provider in nineteenth-century America who became the symbol that doctors and lawyers demonized as they worked to make abortion a crime. I am a professor at the University of Kansas.
This is the definitive account of what abortion looked like for the one hundred years during which it was almost completely illegal in the United States.
Reagan does an excellent job of showing us the different ways that women nevertheless accessed abortion care during that time, even as she points out how access was always shaped by race and class.
She is also great at demonstrating how and why police and lawmakers cracked down on abortion and made it less accessible at particular moments in this one-hundred-year period, ultimately showing why it was eventually decriminalized in 1973.
The definitive history of abortion in the United States, with a new preface that equips readers for what's to come.
When Abortion Was a Crime is the must-read book on abortion history. Originally published ahead of the thirtieth anniversary of Roe v. Wade, this award-winning study was the first to examine the entire period during which abortion was illegal in the United States, beginning in the mid-nineteenth century and ending with that monumental case in 1973. When Abortion Was a Crime is filled with intimate stories and nuanced analysis, demonstrating how abortion was criminalized and policed-and how millions of women…
I'm now retired. But like many historians of my generation, I've been lucky. Having gone to the University of California when there was no tuition and got through graduate school thanks to the GI Bill, I then taught history for five decades, briefly at San Francisco State College and the University of Hawaii, and for a long stretch at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. During those years, I wrote eight books, one was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1987, and three won prizes—the Albert J. Beverage Award in 1970, the second-place Lincoln Prize in 2001, and the Langum Trust Prize in 2015. All but one deal with slavery and power.
This book also deserves more attention than it has received. And it, too, is a corrective. Taking to task a host of biographers and historians who have pretended that the “founding fathers” were blind to slavery and that slavery was a secondary issue in 1787, Finkleman contends that slavery was always a major bone of contention. Moreover, contends Finkelman, Thomas Jefferson was anything but an antislavery man. Instead, he was on the proslavery and anti-Black side in most controversies.
In Slavery and the Founders, Paul Finkelman addresses a central issue of the American founding: how the first generation of leaders of the United States dealt with the profoundly important question of human bondage. The book explores the tension between the professed idea of America as stated in the Declaration of Independence, and the reality of the early American republic, reminding us of the profound and disturbing ways that slavery affected the U.S. Constitution and early American politics. It also offers the most important and detailed short critique of Thomas Jefferson's relationship to slavery available, while at the same time…
As a Certified Divorce Coach and Certified Divorce Financial Analyst®, I work with clients during one of the most difficult stages of their lives. Clients often feel regretful about the past and fearful for the future, and the right book recommendation can really help them move forward. I often give clients reading assignments between coaching sessions that help them process their grief, figure out their goals, educate themselves about finances, feel less alone in the divorce process, and become more confident in making major decisions. I’m never not reading on this subject.
Divorcing someone with a personality disorder can be one of the most stressful things one can face. Bill Eddy is a family lawyer and therapist who understands the complexities of divorcing a high conflict person and has mastered ways to communicate and co-parent with them. This book is a must-read for anyone facing high conflict divorce as it is filled with practical tips and suggestions.
Divorce is difficult under the best of circumstances. Dealing with this inherently adversarial process can be highly emotional on both sides. But when a divorcing individual is a "persuasive blamer"-someone who suffers from borderline personality disorder (BPD), narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), or simply has a high-conflict, manipulative personality-their behavior can have devastating ramifications for their former spouses. People with these disorders may adopt physical and verbal abuse as strategies, lie to lawyers and judges, manipulate the court, and may even level charges of abuse in order to get their way. Because persuasive blamers are so convincing and even charming, these…
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
I’m a retired surgeon and have no expertise in espionage, law enforcement, or the legal system. But I enjoy thriller novels that feature these things, and I follow the adage, “Write what you like to read.” But I do have medical/surgical expertise and have followed another adage: “Write what you know,” so I have inserted medical situations into many of my stories and one of my published books is a medical thriller. What I like about thrillers is the ability to show each side of the conflict. The good guys against the bad guys, neither side knowing what the other is doing. But the reader knows, and this adds to the suspense.
I’ve enjoyed most of Grisham’s novels, but I’m picking this legal thriller (as are most of his books) because of the fascinating plot. It’s a David vs. Goliath story, in which the underdogs are seeking righteous justice from a huge corporation by using the legal court system. The planning involved to make it happen and the attempts by the opposition to destroy the effort gives an inside-baseball look at how multi-million dollar lawsuits are put together. The book also made a great movie!
Ever wonder what happens in the jury room, a place where the lawyer's aren't heard and the judge is not welcome? Who controls a jury when the door is locked and the deliberations begin? John Grisham returns to the legal world and weaves another gripping tale of intrigue and power play. With a combination of taul suspense and high drama this novel will once again show John Grisham as the master storyteller of our generation.
