A Brief History of Thought

The first few chapters were interesting but this is not a “History of Thought”, this is a history of a very few specific schools of thought cherry picked I assume by Ferry's personal preferences. Normally, that'd be fine but when reading “A Brief History of Thought” I'd prefer a more comprehensive primer. Also, this book is hugely weighted towards Nietzsche and deconstruction, the last 100 pages, of this 260 page book are dedicated to these topics while Stoic thought, Christianity and Humanism are given a Cliff Notes treatment in the first two thirds of the book.
Ferry attempts to create some hope for salvation out of a secular humanist perspective but for me, as a subscriber to the Christian ideal, this largely fell flat. Ultimately the promise of “salvation” as Ferry defines it felt hallow and a pale imitation of the far greater reward promised in Christian theology. While I realize that not all readers are Christian and many, like Ferry, may be looking for an alternative source of hope equal to the Christian ideal of “salvation”, but if that's the case then I would argue that Ferry is not a very good spokesman for the task.