Walter Benjamin: A Critical Life

Howard Eiland and Michael Jennings offer a full biography of Walter Benjamin, the German critic and philosopher. They trace his life from his Berlin childhood through his studies, friendships with Gershom Scholem, Bertolt Brecht and Theodor Adorno, his years of exile and his death in 1940 while fleeing the Nazis. The book also explains his major works, from essays on art and technology to the unfinished Arcades Project.

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Shane Parrish: “As one critic put it — “a portrait of this elusive but paradigmatic thinker that deserves to be ranked among the few truly indispensable intellectual biographies of the modern era.” Benjamin was a German philosopher and critic of culture.”