THREE YOUNG and brilliant philosophers — the good-hearted Jean-Paul Sartre, the elegant Simone de Beauvoir, and the debonair Raymond Aron — sat in a bar on Paris’s rue du Montparnasse sometime around 1932. As they sipped apricot cocktails, they discussed how philosophy could be about everyday things, like apricot cocktails. Galvanized by the tipsy banter, Sartre had an epiphany: “Finally there is philosophy.”

This is an excerpt from my book review published today in the Los Angeles Review of Books!  It’s a review of At The Existentialist Cafe by Sarah Bakewell.  Read the full review here.