Most of what we know about many of the ancient Greek thinkers who laid the groundwork for our attempts to understand reality came from a book written circa 200 CE, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers. The author, Diogenes Laertius, was an untrustworthy biographer by modern standards, a gossip columnist who recorded whatever he heard from whatever source, albeit making clear that the accounts he assembled were often contradictory. The beautifully produced new translation includes artwork inspired by those philosophers over many centuries and cultures plus a brace of essays describing Laertius’ influence on how we think about the thinkers. To contemporary eyes, Eminent Philosophers is surprisingly unstuffy—a far more readable gateway to philosophy than most philosophy treatises.
