Buddha: A Graphic Guide
Meditation, Karma, Zen, Tantric and Nirvana are some of the many Buddhist ideas Westerners hear of frequently, even if their meaning has been lost in translation. This vast and complex non-theistic religion is woven into the fabric of Asian civilizations, from India to the Himalayan regions, China, Vietnam, Japan and elsewhere.
What is Buddhism really about?
Introducing Buddha describes the life and teachings of the Buddha, but it also shows that enlightenment is a matter of experiencing the truth individually, and by inspiration which is passed from teacher to student. Superbly illustrated by Borin Van Loon, the book...
Capitalism: A Graphic Guide
The history, philosophy and politics of one of the biggest, most successful but most controversial ideas ever.
Capitalism now dominates the globe and influences everything from laws, wars and government to interpersonal relationships. Introducing Capitalism tells the story of its remarkable and often ruthless rise, evolving through strife and struggle as much as innovation and enterprise.
Dan Cryan and Sharron Shatil, with Piero’s brilliant graphics, cover the major economic, social and political developments that shaped the world we live in, such as the rise of banking, the founding of America and...
Chaos: A Graphic Guide
If a butterfly flaps its wings in Brazil, does it cause a tornado in Texas?
Chaos theory attempts to answer such baffling questions. The discovery of randomness in apparently predictable physical systems has evolved into a science that declares the universe to be far more unpredictable than we have ever imagined.
Introducing Chaos explains how chaos makes its presence felt in events from the fluctuation of animal populations to the ups and downs of the stock market. It examines the roots of chaos in modern maths and physics, and explores the relationship between chaos and complexity, the unifying theory which suggests...
Critical Theory: A Graphic Guide
What might a ‘theory of everything’ look like? Is science an ideology? Who were Adorno, Horkheimer or the Frankfurt School?
The decades since the 1960s have seen an explosion in the production of critical theories. Deconstructionists, poststructuralists, cultural materialists, postcolonialists, black critics and queer theorists, among a host of others, all vie for our attention.
Stuart Sim and Borin Van Loon’s incisive graphic guide provides a route through the tangled jungle of competing ideas and provides an essential historical context, situating these theories within a tradition of critical analysis...
Ethics: A Graphic Guide
Are humans really selfish and greedy, or generous and kind? Does anyone have the right to tell you what ‘good’ and ‘bad’ mean? Is morality about obeying a set of rules or thinking about the consequences?
Ethics affects everyone. Moral dilemmas can be big or small, from whether to keep pets or recycle assiduously to how to use your vote, or whether it’s right to assist someone who wants to die. We all have our own ideas about what is right and what is wrong, but is this something we can know rather than merely believe?
Introducing Ethics traces the arguments of great moral philosophers...
Foucault: A Graphic Guide
The work of Michel Foucault – philosopher, historian, political activist, gay icon – was described at his death as 'the most important event of thought in our century'.
The author of classics such as The History of Sexuality and Discipline and Punish developed concepts of power, authorship, transgression and sex which have transformed how we think about the links between individuals and society. He overturned our assumptions about the experience and perception of madness, sexuality and criminality, and the often brutal social practices of confinement, confession and discipline.
Chris Horrocks and Zoran...
Fractals: A Graphic Guide
Fractal Geometry is the geometry of the natural world – animal, vegetable and mineral. It’s about the broken, wrinkled, wiggly world – the uneven shapes of nature, unlike the idealized forms of Euclidean geometry. We see fractals everywhere; indeed we are fractal!
Fractal Geometry is an extension of classical geometry. Using computers, it can make precise models of physical structures - from ferns to galaxies. Fractal geometry is a new language. Once you speak it, you can describe the shape of cloud as precisely as an architect can describe a house. Introducing Fractals traces the historical development of this...
Freud: A Graphic Guide
Freud revolutionized the way we think about ourselves. His psychoanalytic terms such as Id, Ego, libido, neurosis and Oedipus Complex have become a part of our everyday vocabulary. But do we know what they really mean?
Introducing Freud successfully demystifies the facts of Freud’s discovery of psychoanalysis. Irreverent and witty but never trivial, the book tells the story of Freud’s life and ideas from his upbringing in 19th-century Vienna, his early medical career and his encounter with cocaine, to the gradual evolution of his theories on the unconscious, dreams and sexuality.
With its combination of...
Islam: A Graphic Guide
Islam is one of the world’s great monotheistic religions. Islamic culture, spanning 1,500 years, has produced some of the finest achievements of humanity. Yet the religion followed by a fifth of humankind, including millions from diverse ethnic backgrounds in the US and Europe, is largely seen in the West in terms of fundamentalism, bigotry and violence, a perception reinforced by the terrorist atrocities in New York and Washington in 2001 and subsequent outrages. But the real message of Islam is very far indeed from this picture, making it perhaps the least understood religion in the world. This informative guide recounts the...
Jung: A Graphic Guide
Carl Gustav Jung was the enigmatic and controversial disciple of Sigmund Freud, who supplemented Freud’s work with crucial questions about religion and the soul. Jung, with his new-age following, is often perceived today as a quasi-religious sage, but Introducing Jung explores how this overlooks the fact that he was a scientist and a scholar.
Introducing Jung brilliantly explains why Jung broke away from Freud and describes his own near-psychotic breakdown in mid-life, from which he emerged with radical new insights into the nature of the unconscious mind. The book demonstrates how Jung explored the psychology of religion,...
Keynes: A Graphic Guide
John Maynard Keynes was arguably the twentieth century’s greatest economist. As a new recession bites, it is Keynesian ideas being called into action by governments across the globe.
In the wake of the Great Depression, Keynes advocated that governments spend vast amounts in order to create jobs and prosperity. His ideas, the bedrock of Roosevelt’s New Deal in 1930s America, revolutionised government and helped create an economic consensus only shattered by the monetarism of Reagan and Thatcher’s 1980s.
Keynes himself was a complex man – an establishment figure who married a Russian ballerina in...
Linguistics: A Graphic Guide
Language, it is widely understood, both sets us apart from our fellow creatures and identifies us as uniquely human.
We use language to establish and maintain group membership, to express our emotions, to amuse ourselves and to entertain others, to convey information serious and trivial and exist in a world populated by others. Linguistics is the discipline which studies the structure and functions of both individual languages and the phenomena of language itself.
In spite of early efforts by ancient and medieval scholars, most of our progress in understanding language has come only within the last century, and much of...
Logic: A Graphic Guide
The next sentence is false.
The last sentence is true.
Where’s the logic in that?
Logic is the backbone of Western civilization, holding together our systems of philosophy, science and law. And logic is all around us in our everyday lives, from the languages we speak to the most fundamental workings of our mobile phones. It can even tell us about how a soap opera is constructed.
Introducing Logic is a cleverly illustrated graphic guide to this fascinating area, which cuts across philosophy, science and much more. From ‘fuzzy’ logic to the liar paradox, the book features ideas...
Marxism: A Graphic Guide
Was Marx himself a ‘Marxist’?
What is ‘dialectical materialism’ or the ‘superstructure’?
Did Lenin and Stalin betray Marx and his ideas?
Along with Freud and Darwin, Karl Marx was among the most influential thinkers of the late 19th century. Yet Marx inspired not only revolutions in people’s minds, but colossal political upheavals, radically transforming the lives of many millions of people and the geopolitical map of the entire world.
Introducing Marxism provides a fundamental account of Marx’s original philosophy, its roots in 19th-century European...
Mind & Brain: A Graphic Guide
Introducing Mind & Brain examines a profound and mysterious puzzle: How do the three pounds of electric sponge stowed in the top of your head allow you to experience enchantment in front of an evening landscape, and then make you remember the shopping, say ‘Damn!’ and head off to the supermarket?
To put it another way, how does the biological tissue that makes up the brain give rise to the activities that our culture refers to as ‘the mind’?
This book explains what the sciences have to say about planning and action, language, memory, attention, emotions and vision. It traces the historical...
Nietzsche: A Graphic Guide
Is God dead?
Is morality just a ‘useful mistake’?
Can science explain anything?
Friedrich Nietzsche, who lost his sanity hugging an old horse being whipped by its owner in 1899, is without question one of the most important, influential and yet supremely enigmatic, controversial thinkers of the past 150 years. His work is notoriously difficult, often contradictory and opaque. He was appropriated by the Nazis and yet clearly anticipated existentialism, psychoanalysis, deconstruction and postmodernism. He was master of the philosophical soundbite, the aphorism, and his proclamations, from ‘God is...
Philosophy: A Graphic Guide
Philosophers have always enjoyed asking awkward and provocative questions. Some of these include: What is the nature of reality? What are human beings really like? What is special about the human mind and consciousness? Are we free to choose who we are and what we do? Can we prove that God exists? Can we be certain about anything at all? What is truth? Does language provide us with a true picture of the world? How should we behave towards each other? Do computers think?
Written by Dave Robinson and illustrated by Judy Groves, Introducing Philosophy is a comprehensive and enjoyable graphic guide to philosophical thinking.
...
Postmodernism: A Graphic Guide
What connects Marilyn Monroe, Disney World, The Satanic Verses and cyberspace?
Answer: postmodernism.
But what exactly is postmodernism?
This graphic guide explains clearly the maddeningly enigmatic concept that has been used to define the world's cultural condition over the last three decades.
Introducing Postmodernism tracks the idea back to its roots by taking a tour of some of the most extreme and exhilarating events, people and thought of the last hundred years: in art-constructivism, conceptual art, Marcel Duchamp, Jackson Pollock and Andy Warhol; in politics and history – McCarthy's...
Psychology: A Graphic Guide
What is psychology? When did it begin? Where did it come from? How does psychology compare with psychiatry and psychotherapy? Is it scientific?
Introducing Psychology answers all these intriguing questions and more, explaining what the subject has been in the past and what it is now.
Nigel C. Benson skilfully explains the main schools of thought and the sections within psychology, including Introspection, Bio-psychology, Psychoanalysis, Behaviourism, Comparative (Animal) Psychology, Cognitive Approaches (such as the Gestalt movement), Social Psychology, Developmental Psychology and Humanism. The key figures covered...
Quantum Theory: A Graphic Guide
Quantum theory is one of science’s most thrilling, challenging and even mysterious areas. Scientists such as Planck, Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg and Schrödinger uncovered bizarre paradoxes in the early 20th century that seemed to destroy the fundamental assumptions of ‘classical physics’ – the basic laws we are taught in school.
At the sub-atomic level, one particle seems to know what the others are doing, and according to Heisenberg’s ‘uncertainty principle’, there is a limit on how accurately nature can be observed. And yet quantum theory explanations are amazingly accurate and...
Relativity: A Graphic Guide
What did Einstein mean by E=mc2?
How is a black hole formed?
What use is a fourth dimension?
It is now almost a century since Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity revolutionised our view of the universe. Famously complex, Einstein’s brilliant mathematics and physics are nonetheless magnificent, compelling descriptions of how our world works, and have been – with quantum theory – one of the two key strands of physics’ last 100 years.
This graphic guide to relativity plots a thrilling, visually accessible course through Einstein’s astounding vision of gravity as the...
Sociology: A Graphic Guide
What is sociology? Simply, it is the study of how society functions, or in some cases, does not function.
Various competing schools of sociology have attempted to fit observations of social phenomena into different conceptual systems. Introducing Sociology traces the origins of these systems from Enlightenment thought and the pioneering work of Auguste Comte to subsequent developments in Karl Marx, Herbert Spencer, Emile Durkheim and Max Weber.
The rapid expansion of sociology in 20th-century America and Britain, the post-World War II dominance of Talcott Parsons, the Chicago School and the rise of Structuralism are...
Statistics: A Graphic Guide
From the medicine we take, the treatments we receive, the aptitude and psychometric tests given by employers, the cars we drive, the clothes we wear to even the beer we drink, statistics have given shape to the world we inhabit.
For the media, statistics are routinely ‘damning’, ‘horrifying’, or, occasionally, ‘encouraging’.
Yet, for all their ubiquity, most of us really don’t know what to make of statistics. Exploring the history, mathematics, philosophy and practical use of statistics, Eileen Magnello – accompanied by Borin Van Loon’s intelligent graphic...
Wittgenstein: A Graphic Guide
Ludwig Wittgenstein has somehow captured the popular imagination as the modern Socrates, the master of enigmatic logic, the fascinating and attractive icon of modernism. But what did Wittgenstein really say?
In Introducing Wittgenstein we meet a strange man, the rigorous logician who prized poetry above philosophy, who inherited an immense fortune and gave it all away, who sought death in the trenches of World War One, a great teacher who advised his students to give up philosophy, a tormented soul who thrived on jokes and crime fiction and a solitary who inspired lifelong friendships. We are also given a clear and accessible...
Stephen Hawking: A Graphic Guide
‘An ideal introduction’ Independent
‘Astonishingly comprehensive … clearer than Hawking himself’ Focus
Stephen Hawking is the world-famous physicist with a cameo in The Simpsons on his CV, but outside his academic field his work is little understood. To the public he is a tragic figure – a brilliant scientist and author of the 9 million-copy-selling A Brief History of Time, and yet confined to a wheelchair and almost completely paralysed.
Hawking’s major contribution to science has been to integrate the two great theories of 20th-century physics – Einstein's General...
Hinduism: A Graphic Guide
Hinduism is the world's oldest religion, yet the word 'Hindu' was never used before the 18th-century by Hindus to describe themselves. It is defined as polytheistic, but Gandhi declared that a Hindu needn’t believe in any god. It is a religion as much of myth as of history – it has no founder, no single authoritative book, even few central doctrines.
Introducing Hinduism offers a guide to the key philosophical, literary, mythological and cultural traditions of this extraordinarily diverse faith, giving equal consideration to texts and everyday practices. It untangles the complexities of Hinduism's gods and goddesses,...
Shakespeare: A Graphic Guide
Shakespeare’s absolute pre-eminence is simply unparalleled. His plays pack theatres and provide Hollywood with blockbuster scripts; his works inspire mountains of scholarship and criticism every year. He has given us many of the very words we speak, and even the thoughts we think.
Nick Groom and Piero explore how Shakespeare became so famous and influential, and why he is still widely considered the greatest writer ever. They investigate how the Bard has been worshipped at different times and in different places, used and abused to cultural and political ends, and the roots of the intense controversies which have...
Modernism: A Graphic Guide
Modernism is usually thought of as a shock wave of innovations hitting art, architecture, music, cinema and literature – the work of Picasso, Joyce, Schoenberg, movements like Futurism and Dada, the architecture of Le Corbusier, T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland and the avant-garde theatre of Bertolt Brecht or Samuel Beckett.
But what really defines modernism? Why did it begin and how long did it last? Is Modernism over now?
This graphic tour through 20th-century culture interprets modernism as a set of responses to the phenomenon of modernity itself – the political and social upheavals presented by...
Darwin: A Graphic Guide
‘Miller and Van Loon have brought to life an important chapter of scientific history … a real achievement.’ New Scientist
Progress in genetics today would not have been possible without Darwin’s revolution, but the mysterious man who laid the rational basis for undermining belief in God’s creation was remarkably timid. He spent most of his life in seclusion, a semi-invalid, riddled with doubts, fearing the controversy his theories might unleash.
In this brilliantly lucid book – a classic originally published in 1982 – Jonathan Miller unravels Darwin’s life and his...
Time: A Graphic Guide
What is time? The 5th-century philosopher St Augustine famously said that he knew what time was, so long as no one asked him.
Introducing Time tackles this question and dares to go where Augustine would not. It traces the history of time from Augustine's suggestion that there is no time, to the flowing time of Newton, the conventional time of Poincaré, the static time of Einstein, and then back, full circle, to the idea that there is no time in quantum gravity.
Along the way, many puzzling questions are raised. For instance, is time a fourth dimension similar to space or does it 'flow' in some sense? And if it...
Feminism: A Graphic Guide
Is biology destiny?
Why is the personal political?
Is pornography anti-feminist?
The term ‘feminism’ came into English usage around the 1890s, but women’s conscious struggle to resist discrimination and sexist oppression goes much further back.
Cathia Jenainati and Judy Groves highlight the key social, political and literary ideas which have shaped our thinking about the status of women across the globe, and tell the story of remarkable individuals who actively challenged and changed traditions, social customs and laws.
Surveying the major developments that have affected...
Anthropology: A Graphic Guide
Anthropology originated as the study of ‘primitive’ cultures – a now very loaded term. With the fall of Empire, anthropology became suspect and was torn by dissent from within. Did anthropology serve as a ‘handmaiden to colonialism’? Is it a ‘science’ created by racism to prove racism? Can it aid communication between cultures, or does it reinforce our differences?
Introducing Anthropology is a fascinating account of an uncertain human science seeking to transcend its unsavoury history.
Merryl Wyn Davis and Piero trace the...
Cultural Studies: A Graphic Guide
Cultural studies is a discipline that claims not to be a discipline – a radical critical approach for understanding racial, national, social and gender identities.
Introducing Cultural Studies provides an incisive tour through the minefield of this complex subject, charting its origins in Britain and its migration to the USA, Canada, France, Australia and South Asia, examining the ideas of its leading exponents and providing a flavour of its use around the world. Covering the ground from Gramsci to Raymond Williams, postcolonial discourse to the politics of diaspora, feminism to queer theory, technoculture and the media to...
Evolution: A Graphic Guide
Did life first evolve on other planets? What's the advantage of having sex? Why do your parents look after you? And what good to a bird is half a wing?
In 1859, Charles Darwin shocked the world with a radical theory – evolution by natural selection. More than one hundred and fifty years later, his theory still challenges some of our most precious beliefs.
Introducing Evolution provides a step-by-step guide to 'Darwin's dangerous idea' and takes a fresh look at the often misunderstood concepts of natural selection and the selfish gene. Drawing on the latest findings from genetics, ecology and animal behaviour...
Heidegger: A Graphic Guide
‘Jeff Collins has done an admirable job of explicating this profound thinker.’ John Banville, Irish Times
Martin Heidegger - philosophy’s ‘hidden king’, or leading exponent of a dangerously misguided secular mysticism?
Heidegger announced the end of philosophy and of humanism, and was a committed Nazi and vocal supporter of Hitler’s National Socialism. Was Heidegger offering a deeply conservative mythology or a crucial deconstruction of philosophy as we have known it?
Introducing Heidegger provides an accessible introduction to his notoriously abstruse thinking, mapping out its...
Lacan: A Graphic Guide
‘Excellent clarity’ New Scientist
‘A splendid job’ New Statesman
Jacques Lacan is now regarded as one of the major psychoanalytical theorists, although fierce arguments still rage over the complexity of his ideas.
A leading Lacanian analyst and author, Darian Leader guides the reader through Lacan's early studies of paranoia to his subsequent analytical innovations – his addition of structural linguistics to Freudianism and his new ideas on the infant "mirror phase", the construction of identity and the dynamics of the psyche.
It also makes clear that, although Lacan...
Media Studies: A Graphic Guide
The media is ubiquitous. Every day we watch hours of TV, listen to the radio, surf the web, read newspapers and magazines, go to the cinema or watch DVDs. The media in these forms and more exercise enormous influence and power over all of us.
Introducing Media Studies explores the complex relationship between the media, ideology, knowledge and power. It provides a scintillating tour of media history and presents a coherent view of the media industry, media theory and methods in media research. It explains how ‘the audience’ is constructed and how it in turn interprets the content and meaning of media representation....
Aesthetics: A Graphic Guide
What is beauty, and what is truth? And what does aesthetics have to do with either?
Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy concerned with the whole nature of experience itself, explored through our perceptions, feelings and emotions. The study of aesthetics, along with its widespread application in philosophical, artistic and literary circles, gained currency in the eighteenth century at the dawn of the Romantic period. What was recognised then – that to act upon our true feelings means taking a step into the unknown – is what aesthetics is centrally concerned with now.
Aesthetics today is not only a scholarly...
Aristotle: A Graphic Guide
Aristotle was known as the 'master of those who know'. A foundational thinker in every field of inquiry, he is unmatched even by his teacher Plato for his extraordinary range of mind.
Introducing Aristotle guides the reader through an explosion of theories, from the establishment of systematic logic to the earliest rules of science. Aristotle's authority extended beyond his own lifetime to fundamentally influence Islamic philosophy and medieval scholasticism. For fifteen centuries he remained the paradigm of knowledge itself. But what can Aristotle say about our world today?
Consciousness: A Graphic Guide
What have zombies, Chinese Rooms, ghosts in machines and Schrödinger’s cat got to do with consciousness?
Modern science may have split the atom and solved the mystery of life, but it has yet to explain the source of conscious feelings. It’s a hot subject across the academic world yet sceptics doubt whether consciousness can be tamed by conventional science, or even can be understood at all.
Introducing Consciousness provides a comprehensive guide to the current state of consciousness studies.
From the history of the philosophical relation between mind and matter, via scientific attempts to explain...
Evolutionary Psychology: A Graphic Guide
How did the mind evolve?
Why can’t children under three tell lies?
How is the mind a computer?
Pulling together insights and data from fields as diverse as evolutionary biology, cognitive psychology and archeology, evolutionary psychologists are beginning to piece together the first truly scientific account of human nature.
How has the human mind evolved from that of our ancestors? If our minds are built by selfish genes, why are we so cooperative? Can the differences between male and female psychology be explained in evolutionary terms? Evolutionary psychology offers a new way to answer these –...
Semiotics: A Graphic Guide
An animal’s cry, poetry, medical symptoms, media messages, language disorders, architecture, marketing, body language – all are signs, and their study is what semiotics is all about.
Introducing Semiotics outlines the development of sign study from its precursors in the ancient world, via classical scholars like St Augustine and William of Ockham to to Charles Sanders Peirce – whose writings laid the foundations of 21st century semiotics – and beyond to semioticians such as Jakobson, Sebeok and Umberto Eco.
Paul Cobley’s incisive text and Litza Jansz’s brilliant illustrations identify...
The Enlightenment: A Graphic Guide
The Enlightenment of the 18th century was a crucial epoch, a sea-change in human history.
It was also a vast moral, scientific and political movement, the work of intellectuals across Europe and the New World who linked up in networks of friendship, projects and debates, beginning to free themselves from the authority of the church and find their vocation to change the world.
Exploring the work of Voltaire, Diderot and Rousseau in particular, but also that of Adam Smith, Samuel Johnson, Immanuel Kant, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, Introducing The Enlightenment is a vibrant and accessible introduction to the men...
Descartes: A Graphic Guide
René Descartes is famous as the philosopher who was prepared to doubt everything – even his own physical existence. Most people also know that he said ‘I think, therefore I am’, even if they are not always sure what he really meant by it.
Introducing Descartes explains what Descartes doubted, and why he is usually called the father of modern philosophy. It is a clear and accessible guide to all the puzzling questions he asked about human beings and their place in the world. Dave Robinson and Chris Garratt give a lucid account of Descartes’ contributions to modern science, mathematics and the...
Newton: A Graphic Guide
The rainbow, the moon, a spinning top, a comet, the ebb and flood of the oceans … a falling apple.
There is only one universe and it fell to Isaac Newton to discover its secrets.
Newton was arguably the greatest scientific genius of all time, and yet he remains a mysterious figure.
Introducing Newton explains the extraordinary ideas of a man who sifted through the accumulated knowledge of centuries, tossed out mistaken beliefs, and single-handedly made enormous advances in mathematics, mechanics and optics. By the age of 25, entirely self-taught, he had sketched out a system of the world, and...
Plato: A Graphic Guide
Plato is the most widely studied, and probably the greatest, philosopher of all time.
He asked his contemporary Athenians all the questions that we now call ‘philosophical’, and then recorded their ideas in the form of lively dramatic debates.
Plato also had his own views about the nature of knowledge and reality, politics, ethics, mathematics, economics, the size of the ideal city, and much else besides.
How did philosophers like Socrates and Pythagoras influence Plato? What is his puzzling theory of knowledge all about, and how did it direct his provocative views on politics, ethics and individual...
Romanticism: A Graphic Guide
Philosophy, art, literature, music and politics were all transformed in the turbulent period between the French Revolution of 1789 and the Communist Manifesto of 1848. This was the age of the ‘Romantic revolution’, when modern attitudes to political and artistic freedom were born.
When we think of Romanticism, flamboyant figures such as Byron or Shelley instantly spring to mind, but what about Napoleon or Hegel, Turner or Blake, Wagner or Marx?
How was it that Romanticism could give birth to passionate individualism and chauvinistic nationalism at the same time? How does it prefigure the totalitarian...
Barthes: A Graphic Guide
What do language, clothes, gestures, hairstyles and visual images have in common? They’re all signs – and their study is called semiotics.
Roland Barthes’ work on structuralism during the 1960s expanded the field of semiotics into the analysis of popular culture, clothes and fashion. Introducing Barthes brilliantly elucidates his earlier work which studied language as a series of signs. Philip Thody and Piero then describe how his later insistence on pleasure, the delights of sexual non-conformity, and the freedom of the reader to...
Baudrillard: A Graphic Guide
Did the first Gulf War really take place? Is it possible to fake a bank robbery? Was sexual liberation a disaster?
Jean Baudrillard, who died in 2007, was one of France’s most subtle and powerful theorists. But his provocative style won him as many enemies as admirers. Introducing Baudrillard cuts beneath the controversy to present Baudrillard’s radical claims that reality has been replaced by a simulated world of images. Chris Horrocks and Zoran Jevtic provide a clear account of Baudrillard’s work on obesity, pornography and terrorism and trace his development from...
Derrida: A Graphic Guide
Jacques Derrida, who died in 2004, was one of the most famous philosophers of the late 20th century. Yet his work undermined the rules of philosophy, rejected its methods, broke its procedures and contaminated it with ‘literary’ styles of writing. Derrida’s philosophy was a puzzling array of oblique, deviant and yet rigorous tactics for destabilizing texts, meanings and identities. ‘Deconstruction’, as these strategies have been called, has been reviled and celebrated in equal measure. Taking the reader on an intellectual adventure likely to disturb some of the most...
Economics: A Graphic Guide
Economics was described by the English economist Lionel Robbins in 1935 as ‘the science of scarcity’ but these days economics is everywhere, and it’s never been more popular.
But what is economics really all about? What do the great economists think, and what can economics do for us today?
David Orrell, author of Economyths, explains all in Introducing’s trademark intelligent but witty title, accompanied by brilliant illustrations from the legendary Borin van Loon.
Hegel: A Graphic Guide
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel is one of the greatest thinkers of all time. No other philosopher has had such a profound impact on the ideas and political events of the 20th century.
Hegel's influential writings on philosophy, politics, history and art are parts of a larger systematic whole. They are also among the most difficult in the entire literature of philosophy. Introducing Hegel guides us through a spectacular system of thought which aimed to make sense of history.
The book also provides new perspectives on contemporary postmodern debates about 'metanarratives' (Lyotard) and the 'end...
Kant: A Graphic Guide
Does any of us really know what the truth is, or where to find it?
One of the firstly properly modern thinkers, Immanuel Kant’s work is marked by a scepticism towards religion and transcendental ideas. And the idea of the elusiveness of truth is central to everything he did.
Every subsequent major philosopher owes a profound debt to his work, and yet Kant remains a controversial figure in the history of the philosophy. Why?
In this succinct, witty graphic guide Kant emerges as a diehard rationalist yet also a Romantic who believed in the primacy of emotion and feeling. Christopher Kul-Want and Andrezej...
Machiavelli: A Graphic Guide
'Machiavellian' is a popular byword for treachery and opportunism.
Machiavelli's classic book on statecraft, The Prince, published over 400 years ago, remains controversial to this day because of its electrifying frankness as a practical guide to power. Is it a how-to manual for dictators, a cynical philosophy of 'the end justifies the means', or a more complex and subtle analysis of successful government?
Machiavelli was a loyal servant of the Florentine republic. His opposition to Medici despotism led him...
Melanie Klein: A Graphic Guide
Born in Vienna in 1882, Melanie Klein became a pioneer in child psychoanalysis and developed several ground-breaking concepts about the nature and crucial importance of the early stages of infantile development. Although she was a devoted Freudian, many of her ideas were seen within the psychoanalytic movement as highly controversial, and this led to heated conflicts, particularly with Freud’s daughter, Anna.
Introducing Melanie Klein brilliantly explains Klein’s ideas, and shows the importance of her startling discoveries which...
Political Philosophy: A Graphic Guide
What is society? Why should citizens obey the law? Is democracy the best form of government?
Introducing Political Philosophy expains the central concepts of political thinking through history and presents contexts in which their ideas attracted disciples, controversy and sometimes revolution.
How did governments get started? Could we live without them? How much power should they have? What do anarchism, totalitarianism, libertarianism or fascism really mean? In the turmoil of the early 21st century our need...
Psychoanalysis: A Graphic Guide
How do psychoanalysts conceptualize the mind? Why was Freud so interested in sex? Is psychoanalysis a science? How does analysis work?
In answering these questions, this book offers new insights into the nature of psychoanalytic theory and original ways of describing therapeutic practice. The theory comes alive through Oscar Zarate’s insightful and daring illustrations, which enlighten the text. In demystifying and explaining psychoanalysis, this book will be of interest to students, teachers and the general public.
Rousseau: A Graphic Guide
‘I am like no one else in the whole world ...’ Thus begins Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s defiant Confessions – an autobiography of astounding psychological insight.
Musician, poet, novelist and botanist, but above all, a philosopher who firmly denied being one, Rousseau was the first to ask: What is the value of civilization? His answer – that civilization corrupts natural goodness and increases social inequalities – shocked his Enlightenment contemporaries and still challenges us today.
Did Rousseau inspire the French Revolution? Can Romanticism, psychoanalysis and Existentialism all be...
Sartre: A Graphic Guide
Between the ending of the Second World War and his death in 1980, Jean-Paul Sartre was the world's most famous French writer, and one of the best-known living philosophers. The author of Being and Nothingness, Nausea, The Age of Reason and much more, Sartre was the father of existentialism, one of the 20th century's most enduring, if challenging, ways of thinking.
Introducing Sartre explores Sartre's life and work, examining his Marxism, his enthusiasm for the student rebellion of 1968, his support for national liberation moverments in the Third World,...
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT): A Practical Guide
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy: A Practical Guide gives you straightforward, proven techniques from experts in this life-changing therapy. It's full of practical exercises to help you feel happier, overcome your fears and think in a more helpful way.
- • UNDERSTAND YOUR BEHAVIOUR and how to change negative patterns
• LEARN TO RELAX and put your worries in perspective
• MANAGE NEGATIVE EMOTIONS to help you think differently
• FEEL BETTER about yourself and start achieving your goals again
Elaine Iljon Foreman and Dr Clair...
Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP): A Practical Guide
Neurolinguistic Programming: A Practical Guide takes proven psychological techniques and helps you to use them in the real world. It's packed with exercises and activites so you can get started straight away.
- • INFLUENCE OTHERS and understand how they're influencing you
• MAKE NEW FRIENDS and feel more confident
• ACHIEVE YOUR GOALS with the power of visualisation
• OVERCOME UNHAPPINESS and think positively
Neil Shah, founder of the Stress Management Society, is a consultant in NLP and hypnotherapy and a specialist in...
Sport Psychology: A Practical Guide
Sport Psychology: A Practical Guide will help you become fitter and stronger, achieve your goals and enjoy exercise, with proven, expert techniques. It's full of practical tips to help you train your mind and improve your health.
- • IMPROVE YOUR PERFORMANCE whatever your sport or level of fitness
• RELIEVE STRESS and reduce anxiety about life's challenges
• RECOVER FROM INJURY faster and more effectively
• MAKE EXERCISE A HABIT and feel better all round
Dr Arnold LeUnes is Professor of Psychology at Texas A&M University in...
Psychology of Success: A Practical Guide
Psychology of Success: A Practical Guide uses expert insights, real-life case studies and powerful techniques to help you reach your full potential and achieve whatever you want in life - starting now.
- • IDENTIFY WHAT SUCCESS means to you, and build day-to-day strategies to reach your goals
• OVERCOME OBSTACLES and succeed in the face of adversity
• SEIZE THE DAY and learn to appreciate the bigger picture
• CHANGE YOUR LIFE for the better - for yourself and those around you
Alison Price, founder of The Success...
Child Psychology: A Practical Guide
Child Psychology: A Practical Guide takes insights from experts in children's development and explains how they can benefit your family. It's full of case studies and activites to help you guide your child through life's challenges.
- • UNDERSTAND YOUR CHILD and respond better to their needs
• GRASP THE THEORY and put it into practice straight away
• TRY OUT NEW APPROACHES as recommended by parenting experts
• ENJOY YOUR CHILDREN and learn to love the ups and downs of parenting!
Dr Kairen Cullen is a...
Slavoj Žižek: A Graphic Guide