About This Site
What this is
The Locke Bookshelf (book.themodel.be) is a book guide for people who have picked up John Locke before and been turned back — usually by the scale of the Two Treatises of Government or the vast Essay concerning Human Understanding, or by trying to memorise "natural rights," "property," and "the right of resistance" before meeting the arguments that give them meaning. This English edition selects five titles currently available on amazon.com and lays them out in a reading order that won't defeat you — from an introduction, through the Two Treatises and the Letter Concerning Toleration, to a biography and the Essay. A Japanese edition is also maintained, alongside sister shops such as 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.
The one honesty note that shapes this site
Locke wrote two magnum opuses, and they pull in different directions for a first-time reader. The Two Treatises of Government (1689) is the accessible, world-changing political text — the best door in — while the Essay concerning Human Understanding (1689) is the longer, denser account of the mind, which we deliberately keep for last. That matters for choosing a first book: start with the politics, save the epistemology for when Locke's way of arguing is familiar. Where a book is a modern introduction (Dunn) or a biography (Woolhouse) rather than a primary text, the review says exactly which — and never dresses a study up as the original.
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 biography, a primary text, or a scholarly study, the review says exactly what it is and what role it can honestly play. A guide is scaffolding, not the building — and we say so.
- All descriptions are written by us; no publisher copy is reproduced.
- We favour editions currently in print and available on amazon.com (Oxford, Cambridge, Hackett, Penguin, and the like), and we are explicit about which edition a review is based on.
- 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.
A note on this English edition's lineup
This English shelf mirrors the roles of our Japanese edition rather than its exact titles. Two of the Japanese picks are Japan-only books with no English counterpart — a Japanese-language introduction and a Japanese monograph on Locke's theory of property. In their place we recommend the closest respected English works on the same thinker and themes: John Dunn's Very Short Introduction for the entry point, and Locke's own Essay concerning Human Understanding for the deep, advanced read. The three primary-text and biography roles carry over directly.
Amazon link disclosure
As an Amazon Associate, this site (The Locke 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.