The Swerve is a book about a book, On the Nature of Things by Lucretius, a work of philosophy that attempts to explain the nature of the world that we live in, and tries to lay out what it is that makes for a good human life. This was a work that was well known in Ancient Greece, but was since lost. It was rediscovered six hundred years ago, at a time when most of the wisdom and knowledge of the ancient word had been lost....and it became one of the many forces that inspired the renaissance...

This is a book about Ben Franklin. It’s a biography, but the writer focuses not just on what Franklin said and did in his life, but on what he thought about life, and how it should be lived, so it is philosophy as well. What makes it even better is that Eric Weiner doesn’t just write about Franklin, he engages with his ideas and tries to apply them to his own life...

This is a remarkable and very necessary book that is not so much about idleness as it is a call to examine our lives and our choices, and to do a better job of living than we currently do. Hodgkinson’s definition of idleness is not that we sit around and do nothing, but that we build enough down-time into our lives that we can make the time to think, to read, to reflect, to appreciate art, and to engage in rewarding and hands-on activities like cooking, gardening, engaging with the natural world, and having good times with friends and family, doing things that truly bring us joy...

This book is many things, it is philosophy, memoir, general life advice and musings on a life well lived. It’s unusual in its structure in that it is not a straight-line narrative in which ideas build on each other. Rosen does not have a theory of happiness or a five-step plan to a happier life. While the word is in the title, he doesn't really talk about happiness in the narrative. He's thinking less in terms of how to be happy and more in terms of what we can do to have a good day.

This is a book that tries to answer a very fundamental question, How to Live?  Not how we should live, in the sense of morality, but how to live a good life, a fully human, satisfying, and flourishing one. Sarah Bakewell tries to answer this question through the medium of the life and writings of one man, Michael de Montaigne, the man who single-handedly created the literary genre of the essay, and gave it its name...

This is a book about stoicism, an introduction to the fundamental ideas and teachings, and an exploration of the ways in which these ancient ideas apply to our lives today. It’s a very accessible book because the author takes what are sometimes complex ideas, and relates them to events and experiences in her own life...