Skye C. Cleary, an instructor for the Managing Human Behavior in the Organization course for the Business Certification, looks at one of the big nonfiction books of the season, Sarah Bakewell’s At the Existentialist Cafe: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails, in the Los Angeles Review of Books.
According to Cleary, Bakewell’s approach to detailing the ambitious amount of stories out of this real-life salon of philosophers is presented in an “unusually vibrant, erudite, and compulsively readable manner.” She makes a clear-eyed march through Bakewell’s vision of existentialism and the evolution of philosophy in the first half of the 20th century, where philosophers turned from what the mind is to what the mind is about. Existentialism is a subject close to Cleary's heart and she has a fascinating take on Bakewell’s book.
Read the piece in its entirety on the Los Angeles Review of Books and learn more about the Business Certification.