This remarkable book allows the reader to understand as never before the world of ideas which shaped Marx's world - and in turn made Marx shape our own.
Gareth Stedman Jones is currently Professor of the History of Ideas at Queen Mary, University of London. He is a Fellow of King's College, Cambridge and taught at the university for many years, becoming Professor of Political Science in 1997. He is the author of Outcast London, Languages of Class and An End to Poverty? as well as being the editor of the Penguin Classics edition of The Communist Manifesto.
Exhaustive and staggeringly well-researched
*The Observer*
Vast, dense and intellectually formidable
*The Sunday Times*
Rich and deeply researched
*Literary Review*
Karl Marx: Greatness and Illusion is superb ... So long as we
persist in our tendency to hive off the study of economics from
politics, philosophy and journalism, Marx will remain the
outstanding example of how to overcome the fragmentation of modern
social thought and think about the world as a whole for the sake of
its betterment. And this book will be an admirable guide to how he
did it.
*Financial Times*
An intellectual history of impeccable scholarship... the book is
superb... for those interested in Marx's thinking, Stedman Jones's
book is a treat
*The Telegraph*
There is no better guide to Marx than Gareth Stedman Jones
*Economist*
'A deeply original and illuminating account of Marx's journey
through the intellectual history of the nineteenth century. Stedman
Jones explores the friendships, affinities, rivalries and hatreds
that shaped Marx's life with elegance and analytical brilliance. He
anchors his narrative in a startlingly textured account of the
society and politics of Marx's era.
Most important of all, he brings to life the thoughts of a plethora
of other writers, showing how Marx's engagements with the thoughts
of others enabled him to navigate a course that often had little or
nothing to do with the Marxism of the twentieth century. A profound
reappraisal and a gripping read.'
*Christopher Clark (author of The Sleepwalkers)*
[Marx has] a graceful style of narration that will guide even
readers unfamiliar with 19th-century history through the period's
political controversies. Stedman Jones has a keen grasp of
intellectual history, and skillfully conveys the various themes in
philosophy and economics from which Marx forged his own ideas. He
has written the definitive biography of Marx for our time.
*New York Times*
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