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Walter Benjamin
The Pearl Diver
Series: Jewish Lives
Brief Description
An accessible and authoritative biography of Walter Benjamin that guides the reader through the complexity of his intellectual legacy and the turbulence of his time. Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) is widely considered one of the most creative cultural critics of the twentieth century. Esteemed for his literary...
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Walter Benjamin
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Description
An accessible and authoritative biography of Walter Benjamin that guides the reader through the complexity of his intellectual legacy and the turbulence of his time.
Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) is widely considered one of the most creative cultural critics of the twentieth century. Esteemed for his literary acumen and capacious imagination, he developed a unique style of criticism—his friend Hannah Arendt called it pearl-diving—that sought out fragments of redemption in the ruins of bourgeois civilization.
Award-winning author Peter E. Gordon tells Benjamin's story in a vivid and poetic style, inviting the reader to look beyond the image of Benjamin as a tragic figure of German-Jewish history and portraying him as a complex personality of unique and multifaceted gifts. Tracing Benjamin's life from his Berlin childhood to his Parisian exile, through the romanticism of the youth movements and the conflicts over modernism and Marxism, Gordon compellingly brings Benjamin to life.
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Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9780300216868
Publisher: Yale University Press
Format: Hardback
Date Published: 14 April 2026
Country: United States
Imprint: Yale University Press
Illustration: 8 b-w illus.
Audience: General / adult
DIMENSIONS
Width: 146.0mm
Height: 210.0mm
Weight: 0g
Pages: 224
About the Author
Peter E. Gordon teaches social theory and philosophy at Harvard University. His books include Migrants in the Profane: Critical Theory and the Question of Secularization and A Precarious Happiness: Adorno and the Sources of Normativity. He lives in Cambridge, MA.
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