ESSENTIALS OF PHILOSOPHY: The Basic Concepts of the World's Greatest Thinkers

Before I had a nervous breakdown, fell through the cracks of modern life and ended up living on a fixed income in Grubville, I toiled as a hack writer, just like the fellow who wrote this book. If his experience is anything like mine, it goes as follows: He was paid a small amount of money (flat fee, no royalties) to do all the research and writing of such heady material under severe deadline pressure. Since he signed away all rights, the manuscript he submitted probably bore little resemblance to the book that the irascible 1-star critic on this page read and despised. It entered the hands of editors barely out of their teens who tinkered and fiddled and changed things that they didn't understand, not bothering to fact-check or ask the author for clarification. Not only do they miss errors and typos, they have been known to add their own. They know more about the Gilmore Girls than Sartre and Camus. And the finished product is out there with only his name on the cover, not the many who worked to make it worse than it already was. The author never sees a dime, the editors don't make much, and only the heads of the publishing houses see their coffers swell. This journeyman hack gets 5 stars for his blood, sweat, toil, and tears. I give him a high five for enduring the abuse of parsimonious publishers, airhead editors, and reptilian reviewers.