THE ILLUSTRATED TO THINK LIKE GOD: Pythagoras and Parmenides: The Origins of Philosophy

This book attempts three very difficult feats: humanizing fifth-century B.C. philosophers of the Greek colonies in southern Italy; making the relatively unknown, post-Pythagorean thinker Parmenides into a central philosophical figure for nonexperts; and revising a scholarly work to create a book for lay readers. Hermann has spent nearly 20 years thinking and writing about Parmenides, and argues that it is the latter's method of determining a statement's truth that set philosophy on the logic-based course on which it remains. Hermann takes readers through some grueling philosophical territory, avoiding jargon but (drawing on the scholarly version, released earlier this year by the same publisher) tracking original arguments and interpretations nearly point for point. (He also includes the entirety of Parmenides's only known text, a poem.) Figures from Anaximander to Zeno, the ruins where they lived and thought, and the paradoxes and thought-experiments they proposed are depicted among the 225 well-chosen color illustrations. The results read like an introductory textbook, but one that has been lovingly written, lavishly laid-out and crisply printed—making it engaging enough to draw in readers to whom it has not been assigned. (Dec.)

Forecast: The publisher obviously has a firm belief in Hermann's attempted shifting of the philosophical hierarchy and has backed it up with a first run of 10,000.