How to Be Audiobook By Adam Nicolson cover art

How to Be

Life Lessons from the Early Greeks

Preview

Try for $0.00
Prime logo Prime members: New to Audible?
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

How to Be

By: Adam Nicolson
Narrated by: Leighton Pugh
Try for $0.00

$14.95/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $33.38

Buy for $33.38

Confirm purchase
Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.
Cancel

About this listen

In How to Be, Adam Nicolson takes us on a glorious, immersive journey. Grounded in the belief that places give access to minds, however distant and strange, this book reintroduces us to our earliest thinkers through the lands they inhabited.

To know the mental occupations of Homer or Heraclitus, one must visit their cities, sail their seas, and find landscapes not overwhelmed by the millennia that have passed but retain the atmosphere of that ancient life. Nicolson, the award-winning author of Why Homer Matters, uncovers ideas of personhood with Sappho and Alcaeus on Lesbos; plays with paradox in southern Italy with Zeno, the world’s first absurdist; and visits the coastal city of Miletus, burbling with the ideas of Thales and Anaximenes.

Sparkling with maps, photographs, and artwork, How to Be provides a vital new way of understanding the origins of Western thought. It's an expedition into early ideas and a geography of our deepest preconceptions. Nicolson takes us to the dawn of investigative thought and a nexus of cross-cultural connection, and he makes the questions of the ancient world new again. What are the principles of the physical world? How can we be good in it? And why do we continue to ask these questions?

©2023 Adam Nicolson (P)2023 Dreamscape Media
Greece Greek & Roman Literary History & Criticism Philosophy Ancient History Thought-Provoking Ancient Greece City Italy
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2

What listeners say about How to Be

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    5
  • 4 Stars
    2
  • 3 Stars
    1
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    2
Performance
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    5
  • 4 Stars
    1
  • 3 Stars
    2
  • 2 Stars
    1
  • 1 Stars
    0
Story
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    6
  • 4 Stars
    1
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    2

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Early Greek Philosophy Grounded in the Geography and Cultural

As a student of philosophy for over fifty years, I found this book by Adam Nicolson engaging, informative, thought-provoking and inspiring. His presentation of the geography, culture, life, character, and teachings of each poet is brilliant. I highly recommend it for anyone interested in a rich presentation of the early Greek philosophers.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Impressed but overwhelmed

Very interesting but overwhelmed by the amount of erudition that went too fast for me to grasp. I would have like more of the information to be explained in an easier way with more relative context. Overall, it has inspired me to learn more about this neglected period of history and thought. We build on other’s concepts and precedents.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

Meh

There is a lot more archeology than the sparse amount of life lessons in this book.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

Incoherent mess

This book was recommended to me by a friend who had not read it. I was working in Greece and she thought I’d enjoy it.

I now use it to fall asleep, since it works so well. It is utterly incoherent. It is a stream of consciousness, pseudo-intellectual word salad revolving around Ancient Greek myths and literature that might as well be written in Greek. Run on sentences and the most oblique, obscure references plied on top of each other like pastrami on a Rueben at the Carnegie Deli. This book will appeal to only the most Homer- obsessed Greek literature phd candidate. It will explode the brain of any mere mortal. Maybe it’s utter genius. I’ll never know.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!