Title: A thoughtful and thought-provoking book.
Product review: I cannot claim to have swallowed this entire tome, but I can at least recommend it for sipping. Barnes covers Thales down to Diogenes in a less scholarly and more personal style than Kirk & Raven use in their book of the same name. Barnes is less concerned with philological and historical interpretations than with "whether the Presocratics spoke truly, (and) whether their sayings rested on sound arguments." He also is an entertaining writer. For instance, in pooh-poohing the currently fashionable tendency to stress the irrational side of Presocratic thinking, Barnes writes: "...that even the Greeks had their moments of unreason is not to be denied.... (Nonetheless) the Greeks stand to the irrational as the French to bad cuisine."
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