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Isaiah Berlin

A Life

by Michael Ignatieff

Summary

A substantial and informative biography of Isaiah Berlin, liberal philosopher and distinguished 20th-century intellectual. Noted journalist Ignatieff culls material from a decade's worth of talks with his subject, a man who has been associated with a number of the century's most prominent writers, politicians, and thinkers. A "New York Times" Notable Book for 1998.

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Media Reviews

"Michael Ignatieff has written a fine biography in the spirit of his subject. It is relatively short, filled with anecdotes culled from Berlin's table-talk. The book is light in the best sense: entertaining without ever lacking in seriousness."    -- Ian Buruma

   -- New Republic

"'Isaiah Berlin: A Life' is a fascinating skillful biography, the fruit of a ten-year collaboration between Berlin and Ignatieff, himself a noted author, historian and public intellectual. Berlin insisted he would never write his autobiography or memoirs. Thankfully, Ignatieff has taken on the task so that readers can ponder this robust life of the mind and heart at the end of a dark, contentious century."    -- Anderson Tepper

   -- Time Out (New York)

"Ignatieff has written a fine biography of the most remarkable intellectual of his generation. He never shows off; he tells the truth as he sees it but with tact and moral sensibility, and, as a biographer should, says what he thinks of Berlin's behaviour and ideas without becoming pompous or priggish."    -- Noel Annan

   -- Literary Review

Bibliographic Details

Publisher: Henry Holt & Co
Published date: 1998
Size: 6.75 x 10 inches
Weight: 1.5 pounds
Pages: 356

Publisher's Notes

Isaiah Berlin was witness to a century. Born in Riga in the twilight of the Czarist empire, he lived long enough to see the Soviet state collapse. The son of a Jewish timber merchant, he became a presiding judge of Western intellectual life on both sides of the Atlantic: historian of the Russian intelligentsia, biographer of Marx, scholar of the Romantic movement, and defender of the liberal idea of freedom against Soviet tyranny. When he died in 1997, he was hailed as the most important liberal philosopher of his time. But Berlin's life was not only a life of the mind. Present at the crucial events of our age, he was in Washington during World War II, in Moscow at the dawn of the Cold War, and dining with President John F. Kennedy on the eve of the Cuban Missile Crisis. From Albert Einstein to Virginia Woolf, Winston Churchill to Anna Akhmatova, his circle of friends constitutes a veritable who's who of twentieth century art, politics, and philosophy. In this definitive work, the result of a remarkable ten-year collaboration between biographer and subject, Michael Ignatieff charts the emergence of a unique temperament--serene, comic, secular, and unafraid--and he examines its influence on Berlin's vision of liberalism, which stressed the often tragic nature of political and moral choice. A magisterial book, illuminating and beautifully written, Isaiah Berlin will stand with the great modern biographies.

Other Editions

• Hardcover - Henry Holt & Co (1998) - from $1.00
• Paperback - Henry Holt & Co (1999) - from $2.95

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