People are my landscape', Isaiah Berlin liked to say, and nowhere is the truth of this observation more evident than in his letters. He is a fascinated watcher of human beings in all their variety, and revels in describing them to his many correspondents. His letters combine ironic social comedy and a passionate concern for individual freedom. His interpretation of political events, historical and contemporary, and his views on how life should be lived, are always grounded in the personal, and his fiercest condemnation is ...
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People are my landscape', Isaiah Berlin liked to say, and nowhere is the truth of this observation more evident than in his letters. He is a fascinated watcher of human beings in all their variety, and revels in describing them to his many correspondents. His letters combine ironic social comedy and a passionate concern for individual freedom. His interpretation of political events, historical and contemporary, and his views on how life should be lived, are always grounded in the personal, and his fiercest condemnation is reserved for purveyors of grand abstract theories that ignore what people are really like. This second volume of Berlin's letters takes up the story when, after war service in the United States, he returns to life as an Oxford don. Against the background of post-war austerity, the letters chart years of academic frustration and self-doubt, the intellectual explosion when he moves from philosophy to the history of ideas, his growing national fame as broadcaster and lecturer, the publication of some of his best-known works, his election to a professorship, and his reaction to knighthood. Berlin's visits to American universities, where he sees McCarthyism at work, and his journeys eastward - to Europe, Palestine (and later Israel) and the Soviet Union - inspire acute and often very funny pen-pictures. His political contacts yield an inside view of major world events - the creation of Israel, the Suez Crisis, the Cold War. Many letters provide illuminating, accessible commentary on his ideas. These are the years, too, of momentous developments in his private life: the bachelor don's loss of sexual innocence, the emotional turmoil of his father's death, his courtship of a married woman and transformation into husband and stepfather. Above all, these revealing letters vividly display Berlin's effervescent personality - often infuriating, but always irresistible.
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Add this copy of Enlightening: Letters 1946-1960 to cart. $25.99, good condition, Sold by Solr Books rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Skokie, IL, UNITED STATES, published 2009 by Random House UK.
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Good. No jacket, clippings stapled to ffep. Light wear & marks to hardcover. Tanned textblock edge. Content is very good & clean. Glued binding. Cloth over boards. With dust jacket. 844 p. Contains: Illustrations, black & white, Line drawings, black & white.
Add this copy of Enlightening: Letters 1946-1960 to cart. $43.63, good condition, Sold by Hay-on-Wye Booksellers rated 3.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Hereford, UNITED KINGDOM, published 2009 by Random House UK.
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Seller's Description:
Good. Ill fitting dustjacket, minor shelfwear to extremities of dustjacket, crease to dustjacket at top of spine, otherwise fine. Glued binding. Cloth over boards. With dust jacket. 844 p. Contains: Illustrations, black & white, Line drawings, black & white.
Add this copy of Enlightening: Letters 1946-1960 to cart. $48.64, very good condition, Sold by KimmiesCollection rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Maryville, TN, UNITED STATES, published 2009 by Random House UK.
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Like New. Hardcover. Near fine / near fine dust jacket. Free of any markings and no writings inside. For any additional information or pictures, please inquire.
Add this copy of Enlightening: Letters 1946-1960 to cart. $205.47, new condition, Sold by Bonita rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Newport Coast, CA, UNITED STATES, published 2009 by Random House UK.
I cannot say that I or anyone would read closely every single letter but this volume will have something for everyone. For pure entertainment, Berlin was a marvelous gossip, some of it impishly malicious, but most of it probably pretty accurate summations of the social foibles and in particular work quality of the innumerable movers and shakers, both in politics and in academia, whom he knew. I find most of his musings on philosophy and the history of ideas pretty heavy sledding but as a literary critic he is nearly incomparable, and I wish he had published much more in that vein.
