About This Site
What this is
The Aristotle Bookshelf (book.themodel.be) is a book guide for people who have been defeated by philosophy books before. This English edition selects five titles currently available on amazon.com and presents them in a reading order that won't defeat you — from a short introduction to the whole system, through the Nicomachean Ethics and the Politics, to the summit of the Metaphysics. A Japanese edition is also maintained, alongside sister shops such as The Socrates Bookshelf and The Philosophy Bookshelf.
The editorial room runs a family of philosopher bookshelves and a section-by-section reading archive of the primary texts (in Japanese). Every review and reading-order recommendation on this site rests on that first-hand reading and on explicit bibliographic checking.
How this English edition relates to the Japanese one
This shelf mirrors the roles of our Japanese edition — an introduction, the flagship Nicomachean Ethics, a second primary text, a study, and the hardest original — rather than translating its exact titles. Three of the Japanese picks were domestic works with no English counterpart: an NHK "100 Minutes" study guide, a Japanese introduction (Yoshihisa Yamaguchi), and a Japanese scholarly overview (Masashi Nakahata). In their places we chose the closest respected English works:
- For the accessible introduction, Jonathan Barnes's Aristotle: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press).
- For the second primary text in the ladder, the Politics (Penguin Classics) — the natural companion to the Ethics.
- For the modern study, Jonathan Lear's Aristotle: The Desire to Understand (Cambridge University Press).
The two flagship originals — the Nicomachean Ethics and the Metaphysics — carry directly across from the Japanese shelf, here in their standard English translations.
How books are chosen and rated
- Judgements about the works themselves rest on the editorial room's first-hand reading. Star ratings are our own; no Amazon customer reviews are reproduced.
- Where a book is an introduction, a study, or a primary text, the review says exactly what it is and what role it can honestly play. An introduction is a map, not the building — and we say so.
- All descriptions are written by us; no publisher copy is reproduced.
- Quotations from Aristotle are standard renderings or our own editorial glosses of the Greek, with the Bekker reference given where relevant — not reproductions of the translations under review.
- Cover images are jacket-style images of our own design and differ from the actual covers.
- Prices and availability change, so we do not print them; always check the Amazon product page.
Amazon link disclosure
As an Amazon Associate, this site (The Aristotle Bookshelf) may earn from qualifying purchases.
Book links on this edition go to product pages on Amazon (amazon.com). If a purchase is made through them, this site may receive a commission at no additional cost to you. Commissions never influence the ratings — recommending books you will actually finish, rather than books that merely sell, is in the end what serves readers best.
Privacy policy
This is a static site; no personal information is collected server-side. The browser's localStorage is used solely to count link clicks (to improve the ranking's accuracy); that data stays in your browser and is never transmitted. Once you follow a link to Amazon, Amazon.com's privacy policy applies.
Contact
For corrections and inquiries, please use the contact address on our sister site soqdoq.com.