Introducing Existentialism Book

If you're looking for a simple introductory book to help you grasp the main concepts of existentialism this, despite its tile is DEFINITELY NOT IT.

You would be hard pressed to follow any of this without some prior knowledge of existentialism. I was hard pressed to follow probably 2/3 of it even having familiarity with some of the thinkers he covers.

Can I also say that the graphic element of this book, in my opinion, did absolutely nothing to help understanding? Half the time I didn't even understand what the graphics were portraying. It was like they were referencing a bunch of in-jokes; in some cases they were references to the philosohpers' biographies, but you wouldn't necessarily know that from the book's text.

One of the things I hated most was that there are cartoon images of the philosophers, which the book assumes you can recognize on sight. Throughout I kept looking at the figures and their speech bubbles going, "wait, is that one Heidegger? Well sounds like Heidegger. Probably Heidegger." For most people, even those interested in philosophy, I am not sure philosophers are that visually recognizable.

Also - the fact that the author inserts himself into the book as a character having conversations with the philosophers is narcissistic and obnoxious. My partner (who once upon a time majored in philosophy) pointed out that this is actually a tradition in philosophy, but regardless, this book felt to me like a total vanity project.

I will say it gave me somewhat of a refresher of the main existentialist debates/concepts, despite it's confusingness. But I think there were better books to choose for this purpose. I did like the further reading list at the end with a couple sentences describing each book; honestly, this was probably the most useful part of the book.