About
How Start Here chooses books
Start Here helps beginners pick the right first philosophy book, the right order and the right edition, then actually finish it.
Who writes Start Here
Pages are credited to Start Here editorial: the site's own editorial team, not a named academic. We don't claim credentials we don't have. Instead, every factual claim links to its source, every edition is checked against its ISBN, and our own opinions carry an editorial label. Each page shows when it was published and last updated.
Where the advice comes from
- Real questions. We build pages around what beginners actually search (Google autocomplete, UK) and ask on Reddit (r/askphilosophy, r/Stoicism, r/dostoevsky, r/Nietzsche, r/Camus, r/Jung).
- Cited consensus. Reading orders summarise university reading lists, community threads and scholars' advice. Every page lists its sources.
- Editorial labels. Where a pick, tip or difficulty rating is our own judgement, it is marked editorial.
Numbers we show
- Page counts are for the specific edition (ISBN) we link, from Open Library. Other editions differ.
- Reading time is page count รท 40 pages per hour, a rough assumption. Dense philosophy is often slower.
- Difficulty (Gentle / Steady / Demanding) is an editorial rating.
Quotes and translations
We only quote translations that are in the public domain (e.g. from Project Gutenberg), word for word, with the source linked.
How we make money
Book links go to Bookshop.org, which supports independent bookshops; we may earn a small commission. That never decides which book we recommend, and we often recommend free public-domain texts.
Privacy
We use Cloudflare Web Analytics, which is cookie-free and doesn't track individuals. Your reading shelf stays in your browser.