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In showing how the great philosophers of human history lived and thought - and what they thought about - Peter Cave provides an accessible and enjoyable introduction to thinking philosophically and how it can change our everyday lives. With a lightness of touch, he addresses questions such as: Is there anything 'out there' that gives meaning to our lives? Does reality tell us how we ought to live? What indeed is reality and what is appearance - and how can we tell the difference?This book paints vivid portraits of an assortment of inspiring thinkers: from Lao Tzu to Avicenna to Iris Murdoch; from Hannah Arendt to Socrates and Plato to Karl Marx; from Kierkegaard and Nietzsche to Sartre to Samuel Beckett - and let us not forget Lewis Carroll for some thought-provoking fantasies and Ludwig Wittgenstein for the anguishes of a genius. As well as displaying optimists and pessimists, believers and non-believers, the book displays relevance to current affairs, from free speech to abortion to the treatment of animals to our leaders' moral character.In each brief chapter, Cave brings to life these often prescient, always compelling philosophical thinkers, showing how their ways of approaching the world grew out of their own lives and times and how we may make valuable use of their insights today. Now, more than ever, we need to understand how to live, and how to understand the world around us. This is the perfect guide.

An entertaining collection of biographical portraits of history's most influential and inspiring economists - from Aristotle to Keynes, and Karl Marx to Friedrich Hayek - and what they can teach us about the world today.We all live in the economy, whether we know it or not. The current cost-of-living crisis is an economic problem. Brexit might be a political project, but it has already changed how much money we have to spend and which products we can buy. Climate change may seem to be an ecological, or a social, or a technological problem, but it is also an economic problem, because its solution will transform the structure of the global economy.This book provides a readable and entertaining guide to the great thinkers who help us understand how economics works. It looks at how Aristotle invented the household budget, why Adam Smith wanted to abolish rent, and how modern Nobel prize winners shape the world around us. From the Greeks and Romans to the thinkers behind Enron and the financial crash of 2008, this is the ultimate guide to the greatest economists of the human age, and what their extraordinary thinking can teach us about how to see the world.Mochrie explores how the largely Western, White and male dominated field of economics is beginning to diversify, and shows how the great ideas of complex economics can be applied to our day-to-day existence.