W. undertakes to catalogue the dominant conceptions of pleasure from Plato's predecessors through the early Hellenistic period, ending with the ‘Old Stoics’ (Zeno, Chrysippus and Cleanthes). The renewed influence of the Greeks on ethical debates of our day (in particular, the return to prominence of virtue ethics) along with the marked differences between ancient Greek and contemporary conceptions of pleasure motivate W.'s study, as he seeks to lay ancient conceptions of pleasure alongside contemporary conceptions, thereby bringing ancient Greek thought on pleasure into the contemporary debate. Thus, in addition to his descriptions of ancient Greek notions of pleasure, W. provides a succinct overview of the contemporary debate on pleasure covering the key players and issues from the 1950s to today. He concludes with some suggestions about how ancient work can inform today's debate and how the contemporary debate provides some tools for understanding and articulating the ancient Greeks' work on pleasure.

For better or worse, W.'s approach is encyclopedic. There is no thread of argument that ties the chapters together. One strength of this approach is that each chapter serves as an independent resource. A weakness of this approach is that the book, taken as a whole, is not philosophically interesting. After reviewing and analysing ancient and contemporary work on pleasure, W. ends the book with its shortest chapter wherein he draws lightly and without rigour from the work he has done to make some rather weak suggestions about the synergies between ancient Greek and contemporary debates followed by suggestions for further investigation.

So, the value in W.'s book is to be found in the chapters taken individually rather than collectively. And there is some value in each of the chapters, but it is limited. Each chapter is useful in so far as it puts the main debates, concepts, figures and texts before the reader. In the historically focused chapters, W. offers a wide-ranging literature review of the primary sources, often referring to and discussing texts that even a specialist in ancient Greek philosophy may not know are relevant. W.'s efforts are especially useful in helping a specialist, say someone writing on Plato's conception of pleasure, to be attuned to the larger historical context. In this way W. provides a useful work that can help the hyper-specialised scholar have a broader view of the issues and ideas relating to the ancient Greek conception of pleasure. All this applies even more to his discussion of contemporary works on pleasure, which most scholars of ancient philosophy do not read.

The main limitation of the individual chapters is how well W. accurately captures the philosophical views under discussion. Although W. identifies the key texts and issues, he does not provide a compelling case for his interpretation of any of the historical philosophers he discusses. Since space is limited, I will focus on his discussion of Plato, which is the lengthiest treatment in the book. In his chapters on Plato in particular, and in the historical discussion in general, W. lacks a nuanced view of the philosophical material and writes with little reference to and seemingly no knowledge of the secondary literature. His two chapters on Plato have 43 footnotes, only 2 of which refer to the secondary literature and one of them refers to a work on Pythagoreanism. Contrast this with his chapter on contemporary treatments of pleasure, which has 183 footnotes, most of which refer to the scholarly debate. I present this information, not as a proof of W.'s ignorance of the secondary literature, but as representative of his understanding and incorporation of the secondary literature in his treatment of the ancient texts.

Let us consider W.'s treatment of Republic IX's argument. This argument turns on the distinction of three states for the soul: pain, neutral and pleasure. Pleasure is the movement of the soul from the neutral state to the pleasant state due to the appropriate filling of the soul (i.e. the filling of one of its parts). However, when the soul moves from a state of pain (e.g. disease) to a neutral state, it is often mistaken for pleasure. Thus Plato distinguishes real from apparent pleasures. W., however, construes this passage as committing Plato to two aspects of pleasure, an appearance aspect and a replenishment aspect. W. claims that genuine and false pleasures share the appearance aspect, but differ with regards to the replenishment aspect. Although he considers the replenishment aspect to be the core aspects of pleasure, W. (p. 65) enigmatically states, ‘Insofar as the appearance is pleasant, it is reasonable to understand the appearance of pleasure or pseudo-pleasure to be the pleasantness of pleasure’.

W.'s analysis has gone awry in many ways. First, he ignores one of the grand motifs of the Republic, the relationship between appearance and reality. From early in Book II, appearance and reality are separated in the challenge to the just life when Glaucon argues that it is better to seem (appear) just than to be just. He subsequently demands that Socrates compare a man who seems just while reaping the benefits of injustice with a man who is just, but does not seem to be so. Thus, the appearance can occur without the reality and the reality can occur without the appearance. Casting appearance as an aspect of anything is fundamentally to misunderstand Plato's metaphysics and epistemology throughout the Republic.

W. is also mistaken in claiming that real and apparent pleasures share the appearance aspect. While it is true that real pleasures appear as pleasure to some and apparent pleasures appear as pleasure to some, Plato has argued just prior to the passage W. focuses on that (1) those who have true pleasure, i.e. philosophers, do not consider the appetitive and ambitious pleasures to be true pleasure and (2) that those who see apparent pleasures as real, i.e. the appetitive and ambitious men, do not view real pleasures (intellectual pleasures) as real. Plato reiterates this point in his analogy of the down, middle and up to pain, the neutral state and pleasure. Someone who has moved from below to the middle has the appearance of going up, and believes they are up, when they are only in the middle. Likewise, someone moving from pain to the neutral state, because of the contrast between the two, appears to be in a state of pleasure, but this is mistaken. Someone who has gone up, or attained true pleasure, does not make this mistake. I take this argument to be a recapitulation of the epistemology found in the allegory of the cave. Someone going from the shadows to the objects believes they have come to know the truth. But the philosopher returning to the cave would never make that mistake due to their knowledge.

My assessment is that W. focuses on the issue of pleasure in the primary texts so exclusively that he ignores the secondary literature and the broader context within the primary literature. The book has value in so far as it identifies important issues, texts and figures in the development of the concept of pleasure in ancient Greek philosophy. However, W. does not provide an accurate or well-reasoned account of how to understand the texts or the philosophers who wrote them.