“What a welcome book! Socrates — relentless in the pursuit of truth, champion of the Socratic method, fearless prisoner of conscience — went willingly to his death upon the verdict of an Athenian jury. Why? He lived almost 2,500 years ago, and yet the questions he raised and the controversies he generated are disputed as heatedly now as they were then. Lehmann weaves into Socrates’s story the details of daily life and politics, historical context, and scenes from the comic stage that bring passages from Plato’s dialogues to life. The resulting animation of philosophy is as imaginative as it is realistic.”
– Debra Nails, professor emerita, Michigan State University, and author of The People of Plato