Using comic-book style illustration combined with accessible but authoritative text, the Introducing Graphic Guide series is a uniquely brilliant way to get your head around some of humankind's most thrilling ideas.

In Introducing Existentialism: A Graphic Guide, Richard Appignanesi goes on a personal quest of Existentialism in its original state. He begins with Camus' question of suicide: 'Must life have a meaning to be lived?' Is absurdity at the heart of Existentialism? Or is Sartre right: is Existentialism 'the least scandalous, most technically austere' of all teachings?

Introducing Sartre: A Graphic Guide explains the basic ideas inspiring his world view, and pays particular attention to his idea of freedom. It also places his thinking on literature in the context of the 20th century debate on its nature and function. It examines his ideas on Marxism, his enthusiasm for the student rebellion of 1968, and his support for movements of national liberation in the Third World. This Graphic Guide also provides a succinct account of his life, and especially of the impact which his unusual childhood had on his attitude towards French society.

Introducing Camus: A Graphic Guide portrays a man who was an intellectual in the tradition of the great French humanists, a Resistance fighter during World War II, and also a great sensualist for whom sun, sea, sex, football, and theater were the answer to life's absurdity.


Introducing Freud

by Richard Appignanesi

Published 1 March 1999
Freud revolutionized the way we think about ourselves. His psychoanalytic terms such as Id, Ego, libido, neurosis and Oedipus Complex have become part of our everyday vocabulary. But do we know what they really mean? Introducing Freud successfully demystifies the facts of Freud's discovery of psychoanalysis. Irreverent and witty but never trivial, the book tells the story of Freud's life and ideas from his upbringing in 19th-century Vienna, his early medical career and his encounter with cocaine, to the gradual evolution of his theories on the unconscious, dreams and sexuality.

Introducing Sartre

by Philip Thody

Published 1 August 1999
This text places Sartre's thinking in the context of the 20th century debate on the nature and function of literature, and especially the concept of politically "committed" literature which he so valued. It also explores his ideas about Marxism, his enthusiasm for the 1968 student rebellion, and his support for the liberation of Third World countries from Western imperialism. The book also looks at the impact of his unusual childhood, and its effects on his view of French bourgeois society.

What connects Marliyn Monroe, Disneyworld, "The Satanic Verses" and cyber space? Answer: Postmodernism. But what exactly is postmodernism?


This Graphic Guide explains clearly the maddeningly enigmatic concept that has been used to define the world's cultural condition over the last three decades.



Introducing Postmodernism tracks the idea back to its roots by taking a tour of some of the most extreme and exhilarating events, people and thought of the last 100 years: in art - constructivism, conceptual art, Marcel Duchamp, Jackson Pollock and Andy Warhol; in politics and history - McCarthy's witch-hunts, feminism, Francis Fukuyama and the Holocaust; in philosophy - the work of Derrida, Baudrillard, Foucault and Heidegger.The book also explores postmodernism's take on today, and the anxious grip of globalisation, unpredictable terrorism and unforeseen war that greeted the dawn of the 21st century.



Regularly controversial, rarely straightforward and seldom easy, postmodernism is nonetheless a thrilling intellectual adventure. Introducing Postmodernism is the ideal guide.

Introducing Camus

by David Mariowitz

Published 2 February 2012

"Introducing Camus" portrays a man who was an intellectual in the tradition of the great French humanists, a Resistance fighter during World War II, and also a great sensualist for whom sun, sea, sex, football, and theater were the answer to life's absurdity.


Introducing Barthes

by Philip Thody

Published 1 January 2006

Introducing Ethics

by David Robinson and Chris Garratt

Published 1 January 2003