Very Short Introductions

Are these brainlet-tier?

No, more like freshman/non-specialist tier. Love them.

>tfw very short introductions are still too long for me to read
>like 150 pages and shit
>who am I, some great literary critic like Howard Bloom?

OP here, glad to see another fan (was being somewhat facetious). I've read:

Indian Philosophy
Confucianism
The Ancient Near East

Surprised I never see these in any "start with" charts, but I guess it's almost too obvious?

I ordered the Aristotle one because it seems good, but I don't know

The only two I've read were for Aquinas and Kant. I'd recommend both desu, but, in Aquinas's case, the book by Feser is better.

They're written by the same people who write actual textbooks on the same subjects (e.g. Kenneth Falconer wrote one about fractal geometry). They're great.

Frankly, I never learn much from them. It's for something that you really have ZERO knowledge of.

no, a lot of them are good

dude, the more of these i read (listen to) the more i think they are better than a lot of college courses, like if you getting sick of those dumbed down teaching company classes, try these, they're shorter but more packed with information, for example...

last night i out on the VSI to management, should be boring as shit right? ok they started off talking about mother fucking weber and different types of authority and leadership, then they talked about different methods of coercion and controller or whatever from paying people wages all the way to slavery, and no some sjw shit, they just did a cold analysis of trafficked workers, etc. way better than what you'll get in some management 101 class req for your degree, i'd say these are maybe grad school tier desu

No. I use them as further resources of a subject I'm trying to learn about.

that's the point, you can get a VERY SHORT INTRODUCTION to a field you have never otherwise studied, durr, it's not for specialists to wank themselves off over going "lol i already knew that haha i'm so smart!" dumbass

>grad school tier

by grad school tier i mean they assume u the reader have been exposed to university level coursework, not necessarily that the content is

I've read two and found them useful, they also included several recommendations for further reading

I have read the one on christianity and I think it was good. Gonna start with the one on Jung soon.

here OP get some self insight

I read the one about black holes and it was very informative. I'd recommend it to anyone who wants to know basic stuff about black holes.

inb4 silly puns

I mean, if you only read them and then went on to write or speak about the themes/thinkers presented within then yeah it would be stupid.

But sometimes it helps to have a little shitty framework to deal with before you go full throttle and read the work itself. So long as you are prepared to entirely abandon the framework if necessary.

what part of "introduction" did u not understand

the Kant and Kafka ones are unironically great

>Molecules: A Very Short Introduction
>All about biology

I know they're mostly decent, so can anyone tell me which ones are sub-par and should be avoided? Is there a list somewhere?

that's when i reach for my revolver

The ones by Roger Scruton that I've read (Kant and Spinoza) were both great, so much more engaging than reading some dull textbook in high school.

The Hegel one is terrible.

>A Brief History of Time
>it actually covers the entire history of time up through the 1980's

explain us how

The Koran and Islam ones are apparently pretty substandard. The Bible, The Renaissance and Game Theory are worth skipping, there are much better "Introduction" books out there for those topics.

I've heard people that know what they're talking about say they're hit and miss. The one on rhetoric was fine.

the only people who say they aren't good are buttblasted marxists mad that marxian crap isn't presented as the one true ideology

notice the ones people all claim are bad are matters of faith i.e. koran, bible, marxism, etc.

the bible as literature one was fuckin' rad

>notice the ones people all claim are bad are matters of faith
I just think they should have hired more qualified writers for their religious books, Bill Warner's A Taste of Islam books are IMO much better than any of the Islam/Koran Very Short Introductions.

redpill me on michael cook, why is he not qualified, he seems to have a half dozen scholarly books on islam published

holy shit this looks dank as af, although i can see why islamists would get rustled

Maybe qualified wasn't the right word to use, all I know is some people regard The Koran Introduction book as very underwhelming compared to the others.

like every western scholarship that looks at something with a critical i.e. what actually happened vs. the hagiographic accounts somebody is gonna get buttblasted about it, doesn't mean it's "weak", ask your self why do those people say it's bad? because it tells it from a secular scholarly perspective instead of that of a true believer? these are intended for students in western universities not isis recruits

>matters of faith
>marxism
nice