start here ✦

start here.

Read the actual books behind the quotes. Ordered reading paths for philosophy and politics, sourced from uni reading lists, r/askphilosophy and what's trending.

Most-asked questions

Main Character Reads

Thinkers BookTok can't stop quoting, with the real books behind the quotes.

Dostoevsky

From BookTok's lonely dreamer to the big questions of guilt and God.

4 bookspartly editorial

Nietzsche

Beyond the 'God is dead' quote cards.

4 bookseditorial path

Stoicism

The originals behind the TikTok quotes: control what you can.

4 bookspartly editorial

Machiavelli and Machiavellianism

The real Machiavelli, then the modern power books, clearly labelled.

5 bookspartly editorial

Camus and the absurd

One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

4 bookspartly editorial

Jung, beyond shadow work

Where the TikTok 'shadow work' trend actually comes from.

4 bookseditorial path

Politics: start here

Political philosophy from zero

The gentlest on-ramp: two guides, then the classics.

5 books

Social contract theory

Hobbes to Rawls: why should anyone obey the state?

5 books

Rawls and his critics

The 20th century's central debate about justice.

5 books

Hannah Arendt

Totalitarianism, action and the banality of evil.

4 bookspartly editorial

Politics: Right

Libertarianism

Liberty, property and the minimal state.

4 bookspartly editorial

Conservatism

Tradition, order and scepticism of grand plans.

4 bookseditorial path

Politics: Left

Marxism and critical theory

Capital, ideology and the Frankfurt School.

4 books

Foucault and power

Discipline, biopolitics and how power really works.

4 bookspartly editorial

Politics: Third Way

The Third Way and beyond

Blair-era centrism, communitarianism and distributism.

5 bookspartly editorial