Karl MarxFrancis WheenThis book is currently unavailable. Contact us for availability information.
Annotation A major biography of the man who, more than any other, made the twentieth century. Written by an author of great repute. Publisher Description A major biography of the man who, more than any other, made the twentieth century. Written by an author of great repute. The history of the 20th century is Marx's legacy. Not since Jesus Christ has an obscure pauper inspired such global devotion -- or been so calamitously misinterpreted. The end of the century is a good moment to strip away the mythology and try to rediscover Marx the man. There have been many thousands of books on Marxism, but almost all are written by academics and zealots for whom it is a near blaspemy to treat him as a figure of flesh and blood. In the past few years there have been excellent and successful biographies of many eminent Victorians and yet the most influential of them has remained untouched. In this book Francis Wheen, for the first time, presens Marx the man in all his brilliance and frailty -- as a poverty-stricken Prussian emigre who became a middle-class English gentleman; as an angry agitator who spent much of his adult life in scholarly silence in the British Museum Reading Room; as a gregarious and convivial host who fell out with almost all his friends; as a devoted family man who impregnated his housemaid; as a deeply earnest philosopher who loved drink, cigars and jokes. Author Biography Francis Wheen is a distinguished author and journalist who was voted Columnist of the Year in February 1997 for his weekly column in the Guardian. He has written several books including the highly acclaimed biography of Tom Driberg MP, which was shortlisted for the Whitbread prize. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Customer Reviews
very readable's Review of Karl Marx
This is a well written review of Marx's life as he lived it. That happens to include the vast amount of writting he did and the effect it had in his life time. But the book concentrates on the specifics of his living. This approach is very revealing and dismystifys the awful edifice he has become. No one seems to have a nuanced opinion about Marx. The book makes a subtler judgement seem more valid than the strident pronouncements one hears from the left and the right. Marx had a pretty good sense of humor. Perhaps the last communist to have one. He married a princess. He was very worried his daughters would not be able to come out in society. For a secular saint, he had many petty hypocrisies much like the rest of us Bourgeois ( oh yes he was definitely one of us.) But the more real portrait contained in the book makes him seem heroic never the less. For or against, you can not learn about him without advantage. He was a titanic scholar and a very flexible thinker. Even if the mental structures he created were unsound, they are so appointed that they provide a reader with vast new perspectives.
Would you like to add a review? You'll need to Log in first.
