Product Description
50 Big Ideas You Really Need to Know is a concise, accessible and popular guide to the central tenets of Western thought. Every important principle of philosophy, religion, politics, economics, the arts and the sciences is profiled in a series of short illustrated essays.
From the Inside Flap
50 Big Ideas You Really Need to Know is the ultimate guide to the most important ideas in history. There has never been any shortage of bright ideas: ingenious schemes and fancies that shine brilliantly, only to fizzle out when their essential hollowness becomes apparent. Big ideas, though, are altogether rarer: ideas that are enduring and irresistible because they are so consummate in their conception, so perfect in their timing, so audacious in their ambition, or so devastating in their effect. The full sweep of such ideas - from the beautiful and the wondrous to the uglyl and the debased - is covered in this volume. In a series of 50 accessible and lucidly written essays, Ben Dupré probes some of the most significant ideas in politics, philosophy, religion, economics, science and the arts. Some of these are unimpeachable (liberty, reason); other mind-numbing (The Big Bang, chaos); a few mysterious (fate, surrealism) or downright despicable (fascism, racism). What they have in common is that they all matter and have left a deep impression on human civilisation. Demystifying and entertaining, 50 Big Ideas You Really Need to Know is the perfect introduction to some of the most influential ideas ever conceived, from a writer with a real gift for popularizing often complex and challenging concepts.
