Isaiah Berlin: A Life

From the Publisher

"A model biography of the man of ideas." —Richard Bernstein, The New York Times

"Remarkable. It cannot be overstated how sublimely Ignatieff takes the measure of this man."—Carlin Romano, The Philadelphia Inquirer

"Rarely were biographer and subject better matched. Everything Ignatieff writes, he feels on his pulse." —Stephen Toulmin, Los Angeles Times

Steven Marcus

A touching portrait and a labor of love. . .a rounded view of an extraordinarily distinguished mind. —The New York Times Book Review

Algis Valiunas

Men are never more bloodthirsty, Berlin writes again and again, than when they are in the grip of an idea about the ultimate good: To be certain that one knows the single true way in which humanity ought to live bends one toward murderousness, for those who disagree cannot be permitted to impede mankind's progress toward unqualified happiness. —The American Spectator

Richard Bernstein

. . .[A]dmirable, clearheaded and readable. . .[that] explains why Berlin is celebrated. . .[and] why the celebration is justified. . . .[I]t would be difficult in light of the experience of the century to come up with a clearer and more humane political credo than the one we owe to Isaiah Berlin.
—New York Times

Michael Dirda

Concise, crisply written, always intelligent. . .and valuable.
—Washington Post Book World

Ian Buruma

Michel Ignatieff has written a fine biography in the spirit of his subject. . .entertaining without ever lacking in seriousness.
—New Republic

Noel Annan

A fine biography of the most remarkable intellectual of his generation.
—Literary Review(London)

Ralf Dahrendorf

A rare gem of a book. We knew we had to read Isaiah Berlin's writing, but now also know that his long and extraordinary life has as much to tell us.
— Sunday Times (London)

Publishers Weekly

Over the last 10 years of Isaiah Berlin's life (1909-1997), Ignatieff tape-recorded conversations with the philosopher in what he describes as "a virtuoso display of a great intelligence doing battle with loss." Because this biography is based primarily on these talks--as well as on interviews with Berlin's widow, friends, students and colleagues--the tone is informally conversational rather than pedantically authoritative. After a prosperous childhood in Latvia, Berlin's family was forced to move to London, where young Isaiah absorbed the British values of decency, the toleration of dissent and the importance of liberty over efficiency. At Oxford, he developed intellectually under the likes of Stephen Spender, W.H. Auden, R.G. Collingwood, Elizabeth Bowen and Virginia Woolf. Berlin did well at Oxford--he was elected Tutor at New College, Fellow of All Souls--but with war coming, he welcomed a chance to work for the Ministry of Information, first in the U.S., where his brilliant wartime dispatches (avidly read by Churchill) established his reputation in both Britain and America, and later as part of a Foreign Office team in Moscow (where he met Boris Pasternak) and Leningrad (where he began his transformative friendship with Anna Akhmatova). Throughout the book, Ignatieff concentrates on his subject's conversation and flow of ideas. Berlin championed freedom but not dogmatically. In his view, to be true to human nature in its diversity, we have to embrace contradictory values; otherwise, we lose our humanity. Ignatieff's biography is worthy of its subject, lucidly explaining how this "Paganini of words" used philosophy to defend civilized society.

Library Journal

Ignatieff (The Warrior's Honor, LJ 1/98) met and conferred with Berlin periodically over a ten-year period until Berlin's death at the age of 88 in 1997. He also spent hours talking to Berlin's wife and friends and had complete access to his papers and a collection of his letters. Berlin also "opened himself up" fully to Ignatieff, which has resulted in an intimate, revealing portrait of a man who knew just about everybody of importance in his lifetime--artists, musicians, writers, philosophers, politicians. The account is more or less chronological, from Berlin's birth in Riga, Latvia, to his emigration to London at age 11, to his appointment to teach philosophy at Oxford, to his wartime diplomatic service in America and Europe, and his subsequent abandoning of academic philosophy to pursue political theory and the history of ideas, especially the ideas of liberty and freedom. A good biography should leave readers feeling that they know the subject intimately, and this is definitely a good biography. For both academic and public libraries.--Leon H. Brody, U.S. Office of Personnel Mgt. Lib., Washingon, DC

Ian Buruma

Michel Ignatieff has written a fine biography in the spirit of his subject. . .entertaining without ever lacking in seriousness.
— The New Republic

Steven Marcus

A touching portrait and a labor of love. . .a rounded view of an extraordinarily distinguished mind.
— The New York Times Book Review

Jay Tolson

...[A]n intimate, intelligent, and succinct life of one of the more widely loved men of this century....[Ignatieff] shares with his subject a fine liberal temperament....liberal ideals...serve as the guiding themes of this biography.
— WQ: The Wilson Quarterly

Noel Annan

A fine biography of the most remarkable intellectual of his generation.
— The Literary Review(London)

Martin Sieff

In Michael Ignatieff's book, this great and good man is celebrated,a nd his lessons for the ages taught anew.
— National Review

Kirkus Reviews

A polished life story of the century's pre-eminent liberal (in the classic sense) philosopher. Just as Berlin's critics complained he never wrote a single-volume magnum opus but only essays, Berlin's friends wondered why he never wrote his autobiography and instead circulated his reminiscences in his incomparable conversation. British television talk host and New York Review of Books contributor Ignatieff (The Warrior's Honor Ethic) listened Boswell-like to Berlin for over a decade, initially as another interviewer, then as a potential biographer. The resultant work stands essentially as the authorized life, equitable and sometimes revelatory, particularly about Berlin's complicated relation to Zionism. It solidly locates Berlin, always an outsider on the inside, in his many worlds during what he called "the worst century there has ever been." Quite uncharacteristically for an Oxford don who thrived in the cloistered university environment, his ability to appear in historical flash points seems almost preternatural as related here. Despite Berlin's own complaints of an exiled existence's "discontinuities," Ignatieff's account succeeds in drawing out the thematic threads in the linked episodes of Berlin's life: from his Russian childhood during the Bolshevik Revolution and his Oxford education during the rise of logical positivism to his Foreign Office posting in Washington, D.C., just before America's entry into WWII and his journey to Russia at the beginning of the Cold War. In this last, vividly recounted episode, Berlin managed to see the Russian poets Boris Pasternak and Anna Akhmatova at precisely the moment when they needed contact with the West after Stalin'srepressions. Coming away from these meetings, Berlin's philosophic path for liberty, liberalism, and pluralism was set for the course of the Cold War. During Berlin's post-war rise to fame, Ignatieff cogently glosses the development of his thought while keeping an eye on his personal career, which culminated in the presidency of Oxford's newest graduate college. An informed, smoothly executed portrait of a philosophic fox's lifetime pursuing hedgehog ideas.