Alan Ryan

Alan Ryan is a British political theorist and former warden of New College, Oxford, with a long teaching career there and at Princeton. His magisterial book On Politics surveys the entire Western tradition of political thought from Herodotus to modern democracy, in two volumes written with startling lucidity.

Ryan has written acclaimed studies of John Stuart Mill, Bertrand Russell and John Dewey, and is one of the few political theorists equally trusted by historians and philosophers. On Politics won wide praise for reintroducing the history of political philosophy to citizens and students alike.