What is the nature of things? Must I think my own way through the world? What is justice? How can I be me? How should we treat each other? What is the nature of things? Must I think my own way through the world? What is justice? How can I be me? How should we treat each other? Before the Greeks, the idea of the world was dominated by god-kings and their priests, in a life ruled by imagined metaphysical monsters. 2,500 years ago, in a succession of small eastern Mediterranean harbour-cities, that way of thinking began to change. Men (and some women) decided to cast off mental subservience and apply their own worrying and thinking minds to the conundrums of life. These great innovators shaped the beginnings of philosophy. Through the questioning voyager Odysseus, Homer explored how we might navigate our way through the world. Heraclitus in Ephesus was the first to consider the interrelatedness of things. Xenophanes of Colophon was the first champion of civility. In Lesbos, the Aegean island of Sappho and Alcaeus, the early lyric poets asked themselves ‘How can I be true to myself?’ In Samos, Pythagoras imagined an everlasting soul and took his ideas to Italy where they flowered again in surprising and radical forms. Prize-winning and bestselling writer Adam Nicolson travels through this transforming world and asks what light these ancient thinkers can throw on our deepest preconceptions. Sparkling with maps, photographs and artwork, How to Be is a journey into the origins of Western thought. Hugely formative ideas emerged in these harbour-cities: fluidity of mind, the search for coherence, a need for the just city, a recognition of the mutability of things, a belief in the reality of the ideal — all became the Greeks’ legacy to the world. Born out of a rough, dynamic—and often cruel— moment in human history, it was the dawn of enquiry, where these fundamental questions about self, city and cosmos, asked for the first time, became, as they remain, the unlikely bedrock of understanding. EARLY PRAISE FOR HOW TO BE ‘Passionate, poetic, and hauntingly beautiful, Adam Nicolson’s account of the west’s earliest philosophers brings vividly alive the mercantile hustle and bustle of ideas traded and transformed in a web of maritime Greek cities, where men and women first questioned the nature of the universe and established what it is to be human. In this life-affirming, vital book, those ideas sing with the excitement of a new discovery’ David Stuttard ‘It’s hard not to be dazzled by this book. It is both scholarly and imaginative but the real dazzle lies in its depiction of philosophy not only as a way of life but as something alive itself, growing like a plant out of a particular place, something restless, searching and vital in every sense. No one else writes with the originality, energy and persuasiveness of Adam Nicolson. It’s like encountering the Greek sea. It takes your breath away’ Laura Beatty, bestselling author of Lost Property PRAISE FOR ADAM NICOLSON’S LIFE BETWEEN THE TIDES ‘Miraculous … Effortlessly, in deft, sure and delightful prose, he segues through species, science and art to present tidal nature as a microcosm. The result is an utterly fascinating glimpse of a watery world we only thought we knew’Philip Hoare ‘A beautiful, powerful story of how we understand the unfolding change of the shore. This is a remarkable and powerful book, the rarest of things, both a call-to-arms and a call-to-pause and truly look. Nicolson is unique as a writer, happy soaked to the skin on the shoreline and happy unweaving skeins of philosophy. I loved it’Edmund de Waal ‘Pure joy. From the ecology of a sandhopper to the cosmic pull of the tides Adam Nicolson takes us paddling into the pools of our own nature … a dazzling, kaleidoscopic exploration into the meaning of life itself’Isabella Tree Adam Nicolson is a prize-winning writer of many books on history, nature and the countryside including The Sea is Not Made of Water, The Making of Poetry, Sea Room, God’s Secretaries, The Gentry and the acclaimed The Mighty Dead. His 2017 book, Seabird’s Cry was picked as Waterstones Book of the Month in Scotland and won the prestigious Wainwright Prize for nature writing and the Jeffries Prize. He is the winner of the Royal Society of Literature’s Ondaatje Prize, the Somerset Maugham Award, the W.H. Heinemann Award and the British Topography Prize. He has written and presented many television series and lives on a farm in Sussex. • NEW BOOK FROM PRIZE-WINNING AND BESTSELLING NATURE WRITER ADAM NICOLSON • Life Between the Tides (Waterstones book of the month Aug. 2022) – PB 17K, HB 9K • HUGE SALES RECORD. TCM sales:Sea Room – PB 70k, HB 6.5kSeabird's Cry – PB 28.5k, HB 12.5kMighty Dead – PB 22k, HB 7k// Sales of over 400k across all formats \\ • ADAM NICOLSON IS ONE OF THE GREATEST NATURAL HISTORY WRITERS TODAY AND A MULTI-PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR including the Wainwright Prize, Jeffries Prize, Royal Society of Literature’s Ondaatje Prize, the Somerset Maugham Award, the W.H. Heinemann Award and the British Topography Prize Competition: How to Live;Rubicon;A Guide to the Good Life;Lives of Stoics;The Path;Humankind;Sacred Nature;Why has nobody told me this before?;Women & Power;Daily Stoic. Sarah Bakewell;Mary Beard;Tom Holland;William Irivne;Ryan Holiday; Michael Puett;Rutger Bregman;Karen Armstrong;Dr Julie Smith;Stephen Hanselman
Publicat de: HarperCollins Publishers