This is a revised and slightly expanded version of a book first published in 2005. The original offered a rapid introduction to all the traditional topics of metaphysics – personal identity, fatalism, time, God, free will, universals, possibility and necessity. This edition adds chapters on ethics and the nature of philosophy, thus reaching slightly beyond the confines of its subtitle. To a degree, consequently, it enters into competition with the almost innumerable introductions to philosophy currently available.

The strength of this book over others is that it brings metaphysics to the fore, and by presenting its topics in a brisk and lively fashion, gives the lie to the supposition, widely held not so long ago, that metaphysics was either dead or ought to be abandoned. To my ear, however, the authors’ tone is a little too ‘folksy’, a little too determined to be ‘cool’, and this has the contrary result of suggesting some residual embarrassment about the arcane nature of their subject. Metaphysical questions, as the book itself says several times, are serious questions. A good introduction to them will be serious but not heavy. The key is to secure the first without the second, but Conee and Sider's anxiety to avoid the second may have made them sacrifice a little of the first.