If you liked
Books like Sophie's World
Loved Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder? Here are 10 books with a similar appeal — drawn mostly from philosophy, ranked by how confidently we'd recommend them next.
Philosophy worth reading takes hard questions seriously without making them harder than they need to be. This list spans -380–1998 and includes 1 marked as essential reading in philosophy.
10 books · ranked
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1
The Republic
Socrates argues with Athenian citizens about the nature of justice, the ideal city-state, the philosopher-king, the allegory of the cave, and the forms. Plato's dialogue is the foundational text of Western political philosophy and one of the most influential works of thought ever written.
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2
Prince
"The Prince" is the most controversial book about winning power - and holding on to it - ever written. Machiavelli's tough-minded, pragmatic argument that sometimes it is necessary to abandon ethics t
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3
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
The book that gave us the 'paradigm shift'; how science actually changes its mind.
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4
Principles of internal medicine
This book is a treatise on all disorders & treatments in medicine. It is an authoritative & exhaustive book..basically a Bible for students of medicine. Each topic is authored by an expert in the fiel
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5
The Second Sex
The foundational analysis of how 'woman' has been defined as other; a cornerstone of feminist thought.
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6
A History of Western Philosophy
Twenty-five centuries of ideas, opinionated and surprisingly entertaining; a famous one-volume tour.
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7
The Myth of Sisyphus
Why life worth living despite its apparent absurdity; the essay that frames absurdism.
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8
Escape from Freedom
Escape from Freedom is a book by the Frankfurt-born psychoanalyst Erich Fromm, first published in the United States by Farrar & Rinehart in 1941 with the title Escape from Freedom and a year later as
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9
Three guineas
In response to three requests for donations (to a peace society; to a woman's college rebuilding fund; to a society for obtaining employment for professional women) the author proposes that "the daugh
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10
A Room of One's Own
A Room of One's Own is an extended essay by Virginia Woolf. First published on 24 October 1929, the essay was based on a series of lectures she delivered at Newnham College and Girton College, two wom