This_Book_Needs_No_Title

<i>This Book Needs No Title</i>

This Book Needs No Title

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This Book Needs No Title: A Budget of Living Paradoxes is a 1980 collection of essays about logic, paradoxes, and philosophy, by Raymond Smullyan. It was first published by Prentice-Hall.

First edition

In 2023, it was reissued by What Is the Name of This Press, with a new foreword by Donald Knuth.[1]

Reception

Kirkus Reviews called it "funny" and "provocative", commending Smullyan's descriptions of Zen and noting that the book could appeal to both children and adults, but conceded that Smullyan's work may be an "acquired taste".[2]

The Washington Post has described "This Book Needs No Title" as "tantalizing",[3] while Michael Dirda has declared that (along with Smullyan's earlier "What is the Name of this Book") it has "the cleverest of all titles", positing that Smullyan may have been inspired by Denis Diderot's "Ceci n'est pas un conte".[4]

References

  1. [1]
    This Book Needs No Title, retrieved Mar 2, 2023
  2. [2]
    THIS BOOK NEEDS NO TITLE: A Budget of Living Paradoxes, reviewed at Kirkus Reviews; published May 7, 1980; retrieved May 27, 2018
  3. [3]
    HARDCOVERS IN BRIEF, reviewed at the Washington Post; published July 27, 1997; retrieved May 27, 2018
  4. [4]
    This Is a Column, by Michael Dirda, in The American Scholar; published March 16, 2012; retrieved May 27, 2012
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