The Story of Philosophy was preceded by a number of pamphlets in the Little Blue Books series of inexpensive worker education pamphlets. They proved so popular they were assembled into a single book and published in hardcover form by Simon & Schuster in 1926. Philosophers profiled are, in order: Plato, Aristotle, Francis Bacon, Baruch Spinoza (with a section on Descartes), Voltaire (with a section on Rousseau), Immanuel Kant (with a section on Hegel), Arthur Schopenhauer, Herbert Spencer, and Friedrich Nietzsche. The final two chapters are devoted to European and then American philosophers. Henri Bergson, Benedetto Croce, and Bertrand Russell are covered in the tenth,
American Freedom and Catholic Power pressured to cancel subscriptions to "The Nation" by Cardinal Francis Spellman, an action denounced by Eleanor Roosevelt. The series of articles formed the basis for the book published by Beacon Press in their book series entitled Series in Freedom and Power. When the book was released, "The New York Times" refused to accept advertising for the book and many bookstores refused to carry it. However, the book sold 240,000 copies in its first edition. It was praised by John Dewey, Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell, Henry Sloane Coffin, and Horace Kallen as well as scholarly reviewers. A work of rebuttal, "Catholicism