I’m a bit confused by the marketing and release campaign for this book. The audiobook is coming out first, but it’s not coming out in hardback for another four months, and yet… it doesn’t really work as an audiobook?

As the title suggests, this book guides us through the main principles and fields of philosophy. Instead of taking a chronological view, the author instead focuses on different principles – such as ethics, politics and metaphysics – and explores each one in turn. It’s a good approach, as the field of philosophy and its main focuses have changed so much over the millennia. I definitely felt like I had a much better understanding of these different topics, although I would have been interested to know more about how they link together.

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The reason it doesn’t work particularly well as an audiobook is that this book includes lots of different elements. There are tables and diagrams, which would be incredibly useful to see, but are dry and not very informative when they’re simply read out. The benefit of visual aids is they provide an alternative way to present the information, and that is completely lost on an audiobook. Some fantasy audiobooks come with a pdf of the map and other supplementary material; perhaps that’s something that could be explored here.

What was useful, though, was the regular summaries throughout the book. At the end of each chapter there is a summary that helps lay out the key points and consolidates what has been covered.

I said this last time I reviewed a book on philosophy, but I’ll mention it again here: there was no mention at all of any non-European people or ideas. Particularly in the chapters on language and religion, this felt like a glaring omission.

This is a good introduction to the building blocks of Western philosophy. While it doesn’t go as far as it could to paint a broader picture, it does build basic understanding and interest.

I received a free copy for review. All opinions are my own.