How to Be
Life Lessons from the Early Greeks

How To Be tells the immersive and accessible story of Western thought, its origins and its evolution from early Greece; it is an exploration of the sea-and-city world in which, in the Western tradition, the great and everlasting questions of existence were first explored. Prize-winning history write......more

The question "how to be" is perhaps the most essential question humans have been trying to answer since our conscious existence on Earth began. Adam Nicolson's book with the same title takes us into the world of ancient Greeks and shines a new light on the famous philosophers, thinkers, and ordinary......more

The description of this book as an attempt at describing the evolution of western thinking and civilization does disservice to the accuracy of the historic events and turmoil described clearly in this fantastic book. In fact, this is a book about the evolution of the Greek centric, thinking, and phi......more

Adam Nicolson has written a fascinating book that explores the meaning of To Be Human within the context of Ancient Greece and an emerging world of philosophy that is questioning life in relation to ancient gods and curious creatures and to where man is independently abandoning the dictated ideology......more

Adam Nicolson hits and misses in this book on the Pre-Socratic Philosophers. While the setting is very cinematic in certain parts and does indeed set up an amazing narrative structure to understanding what transpired in the Mediterranean world after the fall of the original empires, the book takes a......more