A History of Philosophy, Vol. 5: Modern Philosophy - The British Philosophers from Hobbes to Hume
Conceived originally as a serious presentatin of the development  of philosophy for Catholic seminary students, Frederick Copleston's   nine-volumeA History Of Philosophyhas journeyed far beyond the  modest purpose of its author to universal acclaim as the best history  of philosophy in English.Copleston, an Oxford Jesuit of immense  erudition who once tangled with A.J. Ayer in a fabled debate about the  existence of God and the possibility of metaphysics, knew that seminary  students were fed a woefully inadequate diet of theses and proofs, and  that their familiarity with most of history's great thinkers  was  reduced to simplistic caricatures.  Copleston set out to redress the  wrong by writing a complete history of Western Philosophy, one  crackling with incident an intellectual excitement - and one that gives  full place to each thinker, presenting his thought in a beautifully  rounded manner and showing his links to those who went before and to  those who came after him.