Thomasson is a gifted writer and philosopher, with a distinctive voice and a forceful message. Norms and Necessity is important and timely, making a strong contribution to one of philosophy's central problems. In support of that verdict I would say that it is the clearest and best-researched work on the nature of modality--the philosophical problems surrounding notions of necessity and possibility--to appear since Saul Kripke and David Lewis put modality back into the centre of the philosophical landscape some fifty years ago. It marks a radical departure from the tradition that they inspired, which makes it especially important.
Amie L. Thomasson is the Daniel P. Stone Professor of Intellectual and Moral Philosophy at Dartmouth College. She is the author of Ontology Made Easy (Oxford University Press, 2015), Ordinary Objects (Oxford University Press, 2007), and Fiction and Metaphysics (Cambridge University Press, 1999), and co-editor (with David W. Smith) of Phenomenology and Philosophy of Mind (Oxford University Press, 2005). Her book Ontology Made Easy was awarded the American Philosophical Association's 2017 Sanders Book Prize. She has also published more than 70 book chapters and articles on topics in metaphysics, metaontology, fiction, philosophy of mind and phenomenology, the philosophy of art, and social ontology. She has twice held Fellowships with the National Endowment for the Humanities.
