Routledge Classics
About the Book Series
"Routledge Classics is more than just a collection of texts...it embodies and circulates challenging ideas and keeps vital debates current and alive." – Hilary Mantel
The Routledge Classics series, with titles by Bertrand Russell, Jean-Paul Sartre, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Mary Midgley, was launched in 2001. The series contains the very best of Routledge’s publishing over the past century or so, books that have, by popular consent, become established as classics in their field. Drawing on a fantastic heritage of innovative writing published by Routledge and its associated imprints, this series makes available in attractive, affordable form some of the most important works of modern times.
In 2026 we are delighted to celebrate the 25th Anniversary of the Routledge Classics series with the publication of seven stellar new titles. All include new prefaces, forewords, introductions or postscripts as well as eye-catching cover designs, a hallmark of the series.
Freedom and Organization
1st Edition
By Bertrand Russell
September 01, 2009
Written by one of the twentieth century’s most significant thinkers, Freedom and Organization, is considered to be Bertrand Russell’s major work on political history. It traces the main causes of political change during a period of one hundred years, which he argues were predominantly influenced by...
ABC of Relativity
1st Edition
By Bertrand Russell
February 20, 2009
First published in 1925, Bertrand Russell’s ABC of Relativity was considered a masterwork of its time, contributing significantly to the mass popularisation of science. Authoritative and accessible, it provides a remarkable introductory guide to Einstein’s theory of Relativity for a general ...
Mortals and Others
1st Edition
By Bertrand Russell
February 20, 2009
Between 1931 and 1935, Bertrand Russell contributed some 156 essays to the literary pages of the American newspaper New York American. These were often fun, humorous observations on the very real issues of the day, such as the Depression, the rise of Nazism and Prohibition, to more perennial themes...
Our Knowledge of the External World
1st Edition
By Bertrand Russell
February 20, 2009
Our Knowledge of the External World is a compilation of lectures Bertrand Russell delivered in the US in which he questions the very relevance and legitimacy of philosophy. In it he investigates the relationship between ‘individual’ and ‘scientific’ knowledge and questions the means in which we ...
An Outline of Philosophy
1st Edition
By Bertrand Russell
February 17, 2009
In his controversial book An Outline of Philosophy, first published in 1927, Bertrand Russell argues that humanity demands consideration solely as the instrument by which we acquire knowledge of the universe. From our inner-world to the outer-world, from our physical world to the universe, his ...
Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits
1st Edition
By Bertrand Russell
February 17, 2009
How do we know what we "know"? How did we –as individuals and as a society – come to accept certain knowledge as fact? In Human Knowledge, Bertrand Russell questions the reliability of our assumptions on knowledge. This brilliant and controversial work investigates the relationship between ‘...
Philosophical Essays
1st Edition
By Bertrand Russell
February 17, 2009
First published in 1910, Philosophical Essays is one of Bertrand Russell’s earliest works and marks an important period in the evolution of thought of one of the world’s most influential thinkers. This selection of seven essays displays Russell's incisiveness and brilliance of exposition in the ...
The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell
1st Edition
By Bertrand Russell
February 20, 2009
Few philosophers have had a more profound influence on the course of modern philosophy than Bertrand Russell. The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell is a comprehensive anthology of Russell’s most definitive essays written between 1903 and 1959. First published in 1961, this remarkable collection is...
The Scientific Outlook
1st Edition
By Bertrand Russell
February 17, 2009
According to Bertrand Russell, science is knowledge; that which seeks general laws connecting a number of particular facts. It is, he argues, far superior to art, where much of the knowledge is intangible and assumed. In The Scientific Outlook, Russell delivers one of his most important works, ...
Unpopular Essays
1st Edition
By Bertrand Russell
February 16, 2009
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...
How the Irish Became White
1st Edition
By Noel Ignatiev
September 01, 2008
'…from time to time a study comes along that truly can be called ‘path breaking,’ ‘seminal,’ ‘essential,’ a ‘must read.’ How the Irish Became White is such a study.' John Bracey, W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies, University of Massachussetts, Amherst The Irish came to America in ...
Keeping Faith: Philosophy and Race in America
1st Edition
By Cornel West
September 01, 2008
'The sheer range of West's interests and insights is staggering and exemplary: he appears equally comfortable talking about literature, ethics, art, jurisprudence, religion, and popular-cultural forms.' - Artforum Keeping Faith is a rich, moving and deeply personal collection of essays from one of ...