Books by Scott Samuelson

To Taste — book cover

New November 2026

To Taste

On Cooking and the Good Life

A philosopher and sous-chef’s meditation on how cooking connects us to one another. Samuelson argues that the daily labor of making and sharing food — seasoned “to taste” — contains the full mystery of the good life.

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Rome as a Guide to the Good Life — book cover

2023

Rome as a Guide to the Good Life

A philosophical tour through the Eternal City, blending history, art, literature, and philosophy to ask what it means to live well. From Cicero to Caravaggio, Rome has long been the great Western laboratory for the examined life.

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Seven Ways of Looking at Pointless Suffering — book cover

2018

Seven Ways of Looking at Pointless Suffering

What do the world’s great thinkers say about the hardest question of all? Drawing on philosophy, literature, and his own time teaching in prison, Samuelson argues that being fully human means both accepting suffering and opposing it.

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The Deepest Human Life — book cover

2014

The Deepest Human Life

An introduction to philosophy for everyone — from Socrates and Epicurus to Kant and beyond — told through the lives of people wrestling with how to live better. Samuelson argues that the deepest human life is everywhere, if only we learn to see it.

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