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Karl Marx by Paul Thomas
Category: Non-Fiction | Series: Critical Lives
As one of the most influential thinkers of the modern age, Karl Marx's political philosophy has resounded throughout politics and history, from the nineteenth century to the present day. In recent times however the concept of 'Marxism' has become a vague term, of uncertain and contestable definition, in ...Show more
Leo Tolstoy by Andrei Zorin
Category: Biography | Series: Critical Lives Ser.
When he arrived in Moscow in 1851, a young Leo Tolstoy set himself three immediate aims: to gamble, to marry, and to obtain a post. At that time he managed only the first. The writer's momentous life would be full of forced breaks and abrupt departures, from the death of his beloved parents and tortuous ...Show more
Leonard Bernstein by Paul R. Laird
Category: Performing Arts | Series: Critical Lives Ser.
Leonard Bernstein was one of twentieth-century music's most successful and recognizable figures. In a career spanning five decades, he conducted many of the world's leading orchestras and composed scores for landmark musicals such as West Side Story. With an iron self-belief, he negotiated risky and cha ...Show more
Mahatma Gandhi by Allen Douglas
Category: No Category | Series: Critical Lives
Mahatma Gandhi was one of the most admired and controversial figures of the twentieth century, and he remains so today. In this book, leading Gandhi scholar Douglas Allen presents a new, challenging approach to understanding Gandhi's life, the contexts within which he lived and shaped history, and how h ...Show more
Richard Owen by Patrick Armstrong
Category: No Category | Series: Critical Lives Ser.
A biography of the provocative nineteenth-century English naturalist. Brilliant, hard-working, and immensely productive, the naturalist Richard Owen was a great ambassador for science and played an outsized role in shaping London's Natural History Museum. Still, Owen was a provocative bully, accused o ...Show more
Rosa Luxemburg by Dana Mills
Category: Biography | Series: Critical Lives Ser.
As an economist and political theorist, Rosa Luxemburg created a body of work that still resonates powerfully today. Born in Poland in 1871, she became a revolutionary leader in Berlin, publishing works including Reform or Revolution and The Accumulation of Capital. In this account of Luxemburg's short ...Show more
Sergei Rachmaninoff by Rebecca Mitchell
Category: Biography | Series: Critical Lives Ser.
Drawing extensively on Russian-language sources, a concise yet comprehensive survey of the life and work of one of classical music's great composers. Unquestionably one of the most popular composers of classical music, Sergei Rachmaninoff has not always been so admired by critics. Detractors have long p ...Show more
Sigmund Freud by Matthew ffytche
Category: History | Series: Critical Lives Ser.
Drawing on the latest research, an engaging and nuanced biography of Freud that argues for his continuing relevance. However much his work has been reviled or contested, Sigmund Freud remains one of the most significant thinkers of the last one hundred and fifty years. He founded psychoanalysis, and hi ...Show more