Bertrand Russell

Available for the first time in many years, Commonsense and Nuclear Warfare presents Russell's keen insights into the threat of nuclear conflict, and his argument that the only way to end this threat is to end war itself. Written at the height of the Cold War, this volume is crucial for understanding Russell's involvement in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and his passionate campaigning for peace. It remains an extremely important book in today's uncertain nuclear world, and is essential reading for all those interested in Russell and postwar history. Includes a new introduction by Ken Coates, Chairman of The Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation.

When Ernest Gellner was his early thirties, he took it upon himself to challenge the prevailing philosophical orthodoxy of the day, Linguistic Philosophy. Finding a powerful ally in Bertrand Russell, who provided the foreword for this book, Gellner embarked on the project that was to put him on the intellectual map. "Words and Things" was the first determined attempt to state the premises and operational rules of the movement. The basic charge was that Linguistic Philosophy was an aberrant, trivializing perversion of good philosophical practice, substituting, in place of honest theorizing and argument, pedantic scrutiny of intrinsically uninteresting detail. When this now-famous critique originally appeared in 1959, it created a scandal, causing a flurry of correspondence in the Times. "Words and Things" remains the most devastating attack on a conventional wisdom in philosophy to this day.

A classic collection of Bertrand Russell's more controversial works, reaffirming his staunch liberal values, Unpopular Essays is one of Russell's most characteristic and self-revealing books. Written to combat... the growth in Dogmatism, on first publication in 1950 it met with critical acclaim and a wide readership and has since become one of his most accessible and popular books.