Books

Humanly Possible: 700 years of humanist freethinking, inquiry, and hope (2023) is about the long tradition of humanist thought, and what it has to say to us today. READ MORE!

At the Existentialist Cafe: freedom, being, and apricot cocktails (2016) tells the story of twentieth-century existentialism, exploring the lives and ideas of its creators.  READ MORE!

How to Live: a life of Montaigne in one question and twenty attempts at an answer (2010) is an unorthodox biography of the  sixteenth-century philosopher and essayist Michel de Montaigne. It won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography in the U.S. and the Duff Cooper Prize for Non-Fiction in the U.K., and was shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award and the Marsh Biography Award.  READ MORE!

The English Dane (2005) explores the life of nineteenth-century sailor,  revolutionary and spy Jorgen Jorgenson, and the story of his 1809 revolution in Iceland.  READ MORE!

The Smart (2001) is a real-life courtroom drama, revolving around the eighteenth-century  courtesan and swindler Margaret Caroline Rudd and her accomplices, the twins Daniel and Robert Perreau. READ MORE!