Understanding Philosophy

I can't say that I do, but Michael Lawrence reviews "a priceless tool in understanding the history, the meaning, and the possibilities of philosophy," which helped me in that direction — Knowing and Unknowing: Bertrand Russell’s A History of Western Philosophy. Says the reviewer,

After the empiricists and rationalists, I’ve found, much philosophy can be dense and downright indiscernible for the amateur reader like myself. With these writers Russell does a marvelous job of crystallizing their work into a recognizable language. With him even Hegel is not insurmountable.

I read Bertrand Russell's tome about fourteen years ago, after having been prepared by Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World: A Novel About the History of Philosophy, which I picked up in an airport. For those looking Eastward, I recommend Feng Youlan's A Short History of Chinese Philosophy.