Isaiah Berlin was witness to a century. Born in the twilight of
the Czarist empire, he lived long enough to see the Soviet state
collapse.
The son of a Riga timber merchant and the first Jew elected to a
fellowship at All Souls, Oxford, he was a historian of Russian
intelligentsia, biographer of Marx, scholar of the Romantic
movement, and defender of the liberal idea of freedom against
Soviet tyranny.
In this definitive biography, a remarkable ten-year
collaboration between biographer and subject, Michael Ignatieff
charts the emergence of a unique liberal temperament-serene, comic,
secular, and unafraid-while examining its influence on Berlin's
vision of liberalism, which stressed the often tragic nature of
political and moral choice.
A masterful work, illuminating, and beautifully written,
Isaiah Berlin: A Life is destined to take its place among
the great modern biographies.
"Michael Ignatieff has written a brilliant, tender, and
insightful biography of this complex, important, and influential
thinker."-The Globe and Mail