Description
Finally in a one-volume paperback edition, On Politics is one of the most ambitious and hugely readable histories of political philosophy in nearly a century.
Praised widely upon hardcover publication, Alan Ryan’s “masterpiece” (David Ulin, Los Angeles Times) blends history and philosophy to examine three thousand years of political thought. Drawing on three decades of research, Ryan insightfully traces the origins of political philosophy from the ancient Greeks to the present and evokes the lives and minds of our greatest thinkers in a way that makes reading about them a “remarkable experience” (Jeremy Waldron, New York Review of Books). Whether writing about Plato or Augustine, Tocqueville or Jefferson, Ryan illuminates John Dewey’s dictum that the role of philosophy is less to see truth than to enhance life. With this “epic” (John Keane, Financial Times) tour de force, Ryan affirms his place as one of the most influential political philosophers of our time.
Also By: Alan Ryan 
On Augustine: The Two Cities
Paperback, 2015
No philosopher speaks more immediately to the excesses of our twenty-first-century world and the limits of human reason than Augustine.
On Hobbes: Escaping the War of All Against All
Paperback, 2015
Hobbes created the first truly modern political philosophy.
On Hobbes: Escaping the War of All Against All
E Book, 2015
Hobbes created the first truly modern political philosophy.
On Augustine: The Two Cities
E Book, 2015
No philosopher speaks more immediately to the excesses of our twenty-first-century world and the limits of human reason than Augustine.
On Machiavelli: The Search for Glory
Paperback, 2015
Based on On Politics, Alan Ryan's "monumental new history of political philosophy" (The Economist).