Isaiah Berlin Paperback by Michael Ignatieff

Product Details

• Publisher: Penguin Canada (2006-11-07)
• Language: English
• Paperback: 496 pages
• ISBN-13: 9780143054634
• Item Weight: 430.92 grams
• Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.24 x 1.3 cm

Isaiah Berlin was witness to a century. Born in the twilight of the Czarist empire, he lived long enough to see the Soviet state collapse.

The son of a Riga timber merchant and the first Jew elected to a fellowship at All Souls, Oxford, he was a historian of Russian intelligentsia, biographer of Marx, scholar of the Romantic movement, and defender of the liberal idea of freedom against Soviet tyranny.

In this definitive biography, a remarkable ten-year collaboration between biographer and subject, Michael Ignatieff charts the emergence of a unique liberal temperament—serene, comic, secular, and unafraid—while examining its influence on Berlin's vision of liberalism, which stressed the often tragic nature of political and moral choice.

A masterful work, illuminating, and beautifully written, Isaiah Berlin: A Life is destined to take its place among the great modern biographies.

"Michael Ignatieff has written a brilliant, tender, and insightful biography of this complex, important, and influential thinker." —The Globe and Mail

About the Author

MICHAEL IGNATIEFF is the author of Isaiah Berlin and The Warrior's Honour, as well as sixteen other acclaimed books, including a memoir, The Russian Album and the Booker finalist Scar Tissue. He writes regularly for the New York Times, the New York Review of Books, and the London Review of Books, and has appeared on numerous radio and television programs, including Fresh Air and Fareed Zakariah GPS. Former head of Canada's Liberal Party and director of the Carr Center for Human Rights at Harvard's Kennedy School, he is currently the president of Central European University in Budapest.