Karl Marx: A Nineteenth-Century LifeFinalist for the Pulitzer Prize (Biography) “Absorbing, meticulously researched.... [Sperber] succeeds in the primary task of all biography, re-creating a man who leaps off the page.” —Jonathan Freedland, New York Times Book Review In this magisterial biography of Karl Marx, “likely to be definitive for many years to come” (John Gray, New York Review of Books), historian Jonathan Sperber creates a meticulously researched and multilayered portrait of both the man and the revolutionary times in which he lived. Based on unprecedented access to the recently opened archives of Marx’s and Engels’s complete writings, Karl Marx: A Nineteenth-Century Life provides a historical context for the personal story of one of the most influential and controversial political philosophers in Western history. By removing Marx from the ideological conflicts of the twentieth century that colored his legacy and placing him within “the society and intellectual currents of the nineteenth century” (Ian Kershaw), Sperber is able to present a full portrait of Marx as neither a soothsaying prophet of the modern world nor the author of its darkest atrocities. This major biography fundamentally reshapes our understanding of a towering historical figure. |
Contents
| 1800 | |
| 1809 | |
The Student | |
The Editor | |
The Émigré 5 The Revolutionary Contents | |
The Insurgent | |
The Exile | |
The Observer | |
The Economist | |
The Private | |
The Veteran | |
The Icon | |
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS | |
Picture Section | |
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1848 Revolution Arnold Ruge artisans asserted Association attitudes Berlin bourgeois bourgeoisie British Bruno Bauer Brussels capital capitalist central Cologne Communist League Communist Manifesto congress contemporaries criticism critique decades democratic denounced economic economists editor émigré Empire endorsed Engels's English Europe European exile Ferdinand Lassalle Feuerbach France Friedrich Friedrich Engels future German Grün Hegel Heinrich Marx human Ibid ideas intellectual IWMA Jenny Jenny von Westphalen Jenny’s Jewish Jews Karl Grün Karl Marx Karl’s labor movement Lassalle leaders leftists letter liberal London Marx and Engels Marx's MECW MEGA Moses Hess Napoleon nationalist newspaper nineteenth century organization Paris Commune party philosophical political economy positivist production Prussian Prussian government published radical refugees regime religion revolutionary Rhineland Schapper secret social socialist society of orders Sperber theories Trier Verlag Vogt Westphalen Wilhelm Liebknecht Willich workers writing wrote Young Hegelians