At the Existentialist Café

Sarah Bakewell tells the story of existentialism as a narrative history, following the intersecting lives of Sartre, Beauvoir, Camus, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and others through cafés, love affairs, political upheavals, and bitter intellectual feuds. It reads like a novel about some of the most fascinating people of the twentieth century.

Why Start Here

If you prefer to understand ideas through the people who created them, this is your book. Bakewell does not simplify the philosophy, but she grounds it in concrete human situations. You learn about phenomenology by watching Sartre stare at an apricot cocktail. You grasp Heidegger’s concept of being-in-the-world through his walks in the Black Forest. The ideas become vivid because they are inseparable from the personalities and circumstances that produced them.

The book also provides something the primary texts cannot: context. Existentialism did not emerge in a vacuum. It grew out of two world wars, the occupation of France, the Cold War, decolonization, and the sexual revolution. Bakewell shows how these historical forces shaped the philosophy and how the philosophy, in turn, shaped the world. By the end, you understand not just what the existentialists thought, but why they thought it.

At 440 pages, it is the longest book on this list, but it moves quickly. Bakewell is a gifted writer who knows how to balance ideas and storytelling. It was named one of the New York Times’ Ten Best Books of 2016.

What to Expect

A group biography built around ideas. Each chapter weaves together personal stories and philosophical concepts, moving chronologically from the 1930s to the present day. The tone is warm, witty, and occasionally irreverent. No prior knowledge of philosophy is required. You will come away knowing the major existentialist thinkers, their key ideas, and how they all connected to each other.