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If you don't yet know your Hobbes from your Hume, if you're still looking to distinguish your stoic from your sceptic, then this is absolutely the book for you. Pitched at the curious beginner with perhaps a few philosophy titles already under their belt, this provides a huge amount of information and covers some challenging ideas, but does so without ever veering off into convolution and inaccessibility. It seems to get just about everything right: it's well-written, well-structured, and well-presented.

Beginning with the early ancient Greek philosophers, Magee takes the reader right through to 20th century analytic and existential philosophy, tackling all the key figures and schools of thought along the way. The great rationalists (Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz) and empiricists (Locke, Hume, etc) and key figures and movements from French and German philosophy are all covered. Books of this sort sometimes have a tendency to feel quite disjointed. Not so this one: each chapter flows smoothly to the next, and if you read it cover to cover, you'll find yourself with a good sense of the development of ideas through the generations.

Presentation of this title is, as we've come to expect from DK, excellent. There are informative side panels, quotations, and an abundance of illustrations including well-chosen and often remarkably apt period artwork. All help to provide a useful sense of context for each key figure and idea. As an extensive and accessible overview of the history of philosophy, Bryan Magee's book completely achieves what it sets out to do, and more importantly, reading it was a real pleasure.