Confessions (Augustine)

Where I heard about it

• Replies to @SpencrGreenberg — named in the answers to his question “What non-fiction book taught you the most about how the world really works?” (the thread, June 2025).
• Li Lu — on Li Lu’s Recommended Book List, under History of Western Civilization, where it follows Great Dialogues of Plato and precedes Descartes and Freud in a deliberate chronological walk through the West’s primary texts.
• @athenaeumbc — in a stack of ~35 old books photographed by Athenaeum Book Club (October 2026) under the line “One of the hidden benefits of reading old books is that they rescue you from the arrogance of the present.” The full stack is listed on One of the hidden benefits… (tweet).

About this edition

This is St. Augustine’s Confessions, written in the late fourth century — not Rousseau’s or Tolstoy’s book of the same title. The recommendation names Augustine explicitly; Li Lu’s list gives no edition.

Connections

• A question for you — What non-fiction… (tweet) — the saved thread this recommendation came from.
• Christianity
• Religion
• Philosophy
• St. Augustine — the author.
• Li Lu · Himalaya Capital — the second recommender, who files it as the step between Plato and Descartes in the history of Western thought rather than as devotional reading.