Thinkers is a guided tour through a vast array of great works and the minds behind them, providing the inspiration and enthusiasm that will encourage both young adult and adult readers to learn to think about thinking and the way the mind works.

In each chapter, Michael discusses an author’s work along with the author, providing quotes from the work and valuable insight into the mind behind the creation.

The authors and their works profiled in the twenty essays are:

1. Charles Van Doren, A History of Knowledge
2. Sir Kenneth Clarke, Civilisation
3. Richard Preston, The Hot Zone
4. Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time
5. George Eliot, Middlemarch
6. Daniel J. Boorstin, The Creators
7. Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels
8. Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment
9. Vasari, The Lives of the Artists
10. James Burke, The Day the Universe Changed
11. A.C. Bradley, Shakespearean Tragedy
12. Kaye Gibbons, Ellen Foster
13. Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
14. Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
15. Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
16. Kate Chopin, The Awakening
17. Eugene O’Neill, Long Day’s Journey into Night
18. Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World
19. Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
20. Frederick Douglass, The Narrative of Frederick Douglass