Margaret Macdonald and Analytic Philosophy in the 1930s. By CherylMisak &amp; MichaelKremer. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2025. 256 pp. <scp>ISBN</scp> : 9780198875734

examining Macdonald's philosophical development in light of her influences.Misak's treatment of Macdonald focuses on her relationship to pragmatism, while Kremer's is a detailed examination of Macdonald's interactions with the views of Wittgenstein.The letters include editorial notes providing helpful information concerning the figures and events referred to, and there is also a complete bibliography of Macdonald's writings.This volume will be of great interest to several groups: historians of early-to-mid twentieth century British philosophy and its relation to developments in America and Vienna, scholars of Wittgenstein, and, most obviously, those with a special interest in the role played by women in the history of analytic philosophy, particularly that of Macdonald.I will briefly say something about the relevance of this book to members of these first two groups, before focusing in greater detail on some of what is valuable to those of the third.The inter-war period was one of philosophical upheaval in Britain.The logical empiricism of Vienna, developed in part through a reading of Wittgenstein's Tractatus, was being introduced to audiences by its originators at Susan Stebbing's invitation, and promulgated in uncompromising terms by A. J. Ayer.But in Cambridge Wittgenstein was developing a new approach to philosophy from that pursued in his earlier tract, and details of this approach were becoming increasingly available through the circulation of dictated notes. 1 Macdonald was an eye-witness to both of these developments, and her place at the centre of philosophical sea change in Britain, as revealed in the letters to Black which form the centre-piece of this volume, offer an extraordinary glimpse into the live reception of ideas which would go on to define the trajectory of analytic philosophy.Macdonald began her philosophical career in London, where she became a PhD student of Stebbing who, as I have mentioned, was pivotal in encouraging central Europeans to express their views in Britain.Stebbing arranged for Moritz Schlick to give a series of lectures in 1932, about which Macdonald says, "I found them more than interesting: they were positively exciting!We have heard almost nothing of this way of thinking in London []" (letter 3).In 1934 Macdonald attended both a tea party and a dinner given for Carnap, who was visiting ahead of lectures which Stebbing, again, had invited him to give in London.Macdonald reports the dinner was attended also by Ayer, Moore, and Ryle, with Ayer bogarting the conversation having "swallowed [Carnap's view] so wholesale" (letter 19).Macdonald met Wittgenstein in