Anthony Gottlieb, born in 1956, is a British writer and historian of ideas who served as Executive Editor of The Economist before establishing himself as one of the most readable guides to the history of philosophy. His two major works in the field, The Dream of Reason and The Dream of Enlightenment, approach the subject with a journalist’s clarity and a scholar’s care.
The scholarly grounding is real. Educated at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and University College London, Gottlieb became a Two-Year Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, in 2017, having previously held visiting fellowships at All Souls and Harvard. He has been a visiting scholar at New York University, a fellow at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, and a teacher at the CUNY Graduate Center and the New School in New York. He also served as series editor of The Routledge Guides to the Great Books – a fitting role for a writer whose vocation is making difficult ideas available to anyone willing to listen.
19 hours and 11 minutes
