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Overview
This enthusiastically received collection contains Isaiah Berlin's appreciation of seventeen people of unusual distinction in the intellectual or political world - sometimes in both. The names of many of them are familiar - Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Chaim Weizmann, Albert Einstein, L. B. Namier, J. L. Austin, Maurice Bowra. with the exception of Roosevelt he met them all, and he knew many of them well. For this new edition four new portraits have been added, including recollections of Virginia woolf and Edmund Wilson. The volume ends with a vivid and moving account of Berlin's meetings in Russia with Boris Pasternak and Anna Akhmatova in 1945 and 1956. As Alan Ryan wrote in the Sunday Times, 'This last essay, in particular, is simply stunning. ' 'An enthralling collection. . . It is hard to think of any other writer who is so penetrating, so amusing, and yet so entirely free of malice. ' Anthony Storr, SPECTATOR 'This splendid book brings the past to life. . . It bears the distinctive stamp of one of the grear thinkers and writers of the age. ' NEW YORK BOOK REVIEWEditorials
Donald R. Stanski
Only the title is bland. The contents of this fourth and final volume of Isaiah Berlin's ''Selected Writings'' bear the distinctive stamp of one of the great thinkers and writers of our age. The general reader, unfamiliar with his work, or put off by the formidable subject matter of the earlier volumes will find Personal Impressions altogether welcoming and rewarding.— New York Times
New York Times Book Review
Welcoming and rewarding. . . . [Berlin] is at his most conversational. This splendid book bring[s] the past to life.— Peter Stansky
New York Times Book Review
Welcoming and rewarding. . . . [Berlin] is at his most conversational. This splendid book bring[s] the past to life.Book Details
Published
June 30, 2012
Publisher
Random House Adult Trade Publishing Group
ISBN
9781448155477