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…
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…
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 youngster I used to drive my parents crazy because I was so passionate about recycling. I rekindled this passion about five years ago and started Everyday Recycler. Through my website I help people improve their recycling habits by offering actionable instructions with a focus on explaining how recycling works and its intrinsic value. I also advocate strongly for recycled products. I believe that by purchasing recycled products, we can help generate demand for the materials we toss in our recycling bin and contribute to the overall success of recycling. These works have educated and inspired me over the years. I hope they inspire you as much.
In researching my own book I learnt that e-waste is one of the fastest-growing waste streams on the planet. It impacts the environment and humans at all stages from extraction of raw materials to the end of life disposal.
A key solution is to keep items in their originally intended use as long as possible. Right to Repair explores the critical issues of corporations limiting consumers' ability to repair their own products, leading to planned obsolescence and ultimately unnecessary waste. This is an urgent issue that requires more attention and plays a crucial role in reducing e-waste and its negative effects on the environment.
Right to Repair will help the reader understand their rights to repair-friendly technology and help them become a more informed consumer.
In recent decades, companies around the world have deployed an arsenal of tools - including IP law, hardware design, software restrictions, pricing strategies, and marketing messages - to prevent consumers from fixing the things they own. While this strategy has enriched companies almost beyond measure, it has taken billions of dollars out of the pockets of consumers and imposed massive environmental costs on the planet. In The Right to Repair, Aaron Perzanowski analyzes the history of repair to show how we've arrived at this moment, when a battle over repair is being waged - largely unnoticed - in courtrooms, legislatures,…
Years ago, I wrote mystery novels featuring women investigators when that was new in the genre. Now, I discover stories of real-life women whose lives have a natural story arc that can engage the reader from start to finish. Like gambling and prostitution, abortion, when it was illegal in the US, as it is now again in many places, was simultaneously in your face and undercover. It was also largely practiced by women, which is why I’m fascinated by books about it.
This book has a permanent place on my nightstand, where I reach for it whenever I need a pithy, brilliant reminder of how the US completed its late-nineteenth-century transformation from a country with no abortion laws to a place where abortion was banned everywhere at every stage.
I’m amazed that a book first published in 1978, long before the advent of the Internet, managed to marshal evidence from newspaper classified ads and forgotten trials to present a portrait of America where abortion was widespread but seldom dared to speak its name.
'The history of how abortion came to be banned and how women lost--for the century between approximately 1870 and 1970--rights previously thought to be natural and inherent over their own bodies is a fascinating and infuriating one.
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…
Like myself, each of these novels involved older professional Black women protagonists. Each of these authors presented multidimensional women experiencing circumstances that surpass culture and ethnicity. As women age, not only do we take on new roles, but we physically and emotionally change. I appreciate books with relatable characters coping with issues I experience—menopause, aging parents, an empty nest. Reading mysteries with fictional characters dealing with situations I experience makes me feel less isolated.
Someone is trying to kill Carole Ann. As a Washington DC lawyer, Carole Ann embraces the challenge of working in DC’s competitive fast-paced environment, but that business has placed a bullseye on her back. She must figure out why while balancing work and her personal life. I appreciated how the author created a multidimensional woman that didn’t measure success by her romantic entanglements.
No matter how hard she tries to live the quiet life, trouble has a way of grabbing Carole Ann Gibson by the throat -- and this time all her famous intuition and raw courage might not be enough to save her.
In the heartbreaking aftermath of her husband's death, Carole Ann, widely known as "the best damn trial lawyer in D.C.," left her criminal-law practice for what she hoped was a safer, saner life as a partner in her friend Jake's security firm. But when the richest man in Washington, D.C., hires her to find his daughter, she is caught…
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.
I've always wanted to be a detective. I remember writing stories on my mom's old typewriter and playing pretend investigator with my childhood friend. I have had an appetite for stories and mysteries for as long as I remember. I was intrigued by human behavior and had the desire to find justice. This led me to study forensics and use my fine art ability and critical mind to get answers for victims and their families. I have a Master's Degree in Forensic Science and years of government and experience as a forensic artist and investigator, making my writing as authentic as possible. My story and personal struggles, and life's discoveries are highlighted by my stories.
I devoured all of Grisham’s books as they came out. The legal thrillers make studying the law extremely fascinating. The Pelican Brief is still one of my favorites because of my own love of New Orleans, the environment, and how I saw myself as a passionate environmentalist at one time. The Pelican Brief shows us how intertwined law, land use, the environment, and murder can be. We see how a young woman with a curious mind can see patterns that others have not and the lengths she has to go to to find justice.
_______________________________________ Two Supreme Court Justices are dead, their murders unsolved. But one woman might have found the answer - if she can live to tell it.
Darby Shaw is a brilliant New Orleans legal student with a sharp political mind. For her own amusement, she draws up a legal brief showing how the judges might have been murdered for political reasons, and shows it to her professor. He shows it to his friend, an FBI lawyer.
Then the professor dies in a car bombing.
And Darby realises that her brief, which pointed to a vast presidential conspiracy, might be right.…
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