Think

By WALTER ISAACSON

Many years ago, Simon Blackburn tried to teach me philosophy, an endeavor I suspect he found rather frustrating. If he had written this book back then, we both might have had more fun with Cartesian dualism and the like. Blackburn has produced the one book every smart person should read to understand, and even enjoy, the key questions of philosophy, ranging from those about free will and morality to what we can really know about the world around us. Alas, he is better at explaining doubts and skepticisms and moral relativism than at charting a path out of such dilemmas. But that was also the plight of Descartes, Locke, Hume and his other favorite Western philosophers.

--By Walter Isaacson