Read Books This will provide a list of the books I've read with a brief review. Users are blocked, contact me for access. I welcome discussions, but I'm tired of spam.

June 20, 2019

The Beatles and Philosophy edited by Michael and Stephen Baur

Filed under: Philosophy — Tags: , , — Randolph @ 3:50 pm

This books in in the series, Popular Culture and Philosophy by Open Court. As with the others, it is a collection of essays by various philosophers on a variety of subjects and tied to subjects of pop culture, in this case, The Beatles.

This book covers topics such as reality, social philosophy, moral philosophy, existentialism and a few others. Each is tied to Beatles songs.

I generally enjoy this series, I like how concepts of philosophy are tied to subjects we are familiar with, this helps grasp the concepts and to remember the lessons. However, I felt this volume was weaker than the others. The tie-ins sometimes felt contrived and different philosophers often found very different, and somewhat contradictory, messages in the same lyrics. This does not aid learning the concepts.

Overall, I did enjoy the book. Several of the essays were very good and enjoyable to read. I think I’d recommend others in the series over this one.

January 18, 2019

Heroes and Philosophy: Buy the Book, Save the World Edited by David K. Johnson, William Irwin

Filed under: Philosophy — Tags: , — Randolph @ 1:59 pm

Yet another book in the Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series. I always enjoy them.

In this book, various philosophers look at the Heroes series of TV shows, books and webisodes, and explain different topics of philosophy using the actions and behaviors of the characters we’re familiar with.

I enjoyed this one a little more than some of the others. It didn’t spend as much time looking at the show and a little more on the philosophical topics. The other style is more useful when the reader isn’t as familiar with the topic, so someone unfamiliar with the Heroes characters may not get as much out of it.

January 9, 2019

50 Ethics Ideas You Really Need to Know by Ben Dupré

Filed under: Philosophy — Tags: , , — Randolph @ 1:43 pm

I enjoyed this book and was disappointed. It does provide a brief overview to 50 interesting topics, but it provides too little information. It does little more than just whet the appetite, not even enough to figure out if a more in-depth study would be interesting to you.

I did like the layout. Each topic is two pages. There is a block of related information, a timeline of 4-5 major events related to the topic, and the text has about 3 or 4 tipics in easy-to-see section.

The quality of information is good when you have no, or very little, prior knowedge on the topic. But it is light reading and good as a reminder or refresher.

Powered by WordPress