This is a recent volume in the "For Beginners" series, edited by Richard Appiganesi, which ranges from Machiavelli to Postmodernism, from Newton to Stephen Hawking, from the Enlightenment to Chaos Theory. Each book is written in comic-strip form, with endearingly inept illustrations. This may seem off-putting to the earnest autodidact; in fact, the approach works very well: the books may look unserious, but they are soundly based. The treatment of Heidegger's stubborn, extremely intricate, often impenetrable - wholly nonsensical, according to some, such as the logical positivists - philosophy is clear and, rare in treatments of this thinker, jargon-free. Heidegger is a controversial figure, not only for his philosophy but for his politics: he joined the Nazi party in 1933, and never publicly recanted his admiration for its policies. For all the difficulty of his philosophy, his concerns are always with the here-and-now, with the question of what it is to be in the world - with human being. Jeff Collins - I assume he is the author of the text - has done an admirable job of explicating the work of this profound, frequently maddening, but always exciting thinker.
John Banville