The History of Western Philosophy in 100 Haiku

A whirlwind tour of two and a half millennia—told in 100 razor-sharp haiku. In this audacious pocket history, celebrated Greek poet Haris Vlavianos compresses Western philosophy from Thales to Nussbaum into crystalline 5-7-5 bursts: funny, heretical, and unexpectedly illuminating. Plato gets a cave with “all mod cons.” Kant boots up a “laptop mind.” Wittgenstein tries to coax a fly from its bottle. It’s Russell meets Basho, Socrates with a punchline—and beneath the wit, real argument and insight.

Rendered into live, witty English by Peter Mackridge, The History of Western Philosophy in 100 Haiku is a perfect gift for the philosophically curious, the poetry-obsessed, and anyone who likes their big ideas distilled to their brightest essence. Read it straight through, keep it by the bedside, or press it into a skeptic’s hand: you’ll laugh, you’ll learn, and you’ll never look at the canon the same way again.