This remarkable collection contains Isaiah Berlin's appreciations of seventeen people of unusual distinction in the intellectual or political world, sometimes both. The names of many of them are familiar: Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Chaim Weizmann, Albert Einstein, and others. With the exception of Roosevelt, he met them all and knew many of them well. For this expanded edition, four new portraits have been added, including those of Virginia Woolf and Edmund Wilson. This volume also contains a vivid and moving account of Berlin's meetings in Russia with Boris Pasternak and Anna Akhmatova in 1945 and 1956. Perhaps the most fascinating of these "personal impressions" is found in the epilogue, where Berlin describes the three strands in his own personality: Russian, English, and Jewish.
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Welcoming and rewarding. . . . [Berlin] is at his most conversational. This splendid book bring[s] the past to life. -- Peter Stansky, New York Times Book Review
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"Berlin was one of the foremost intellectuals in the English language--one of the finest historians of ideas in the latter half of the century and a rightly celebrated political thinker. . . . These essays tell us about him as well as his subjects."--Mitchell Cohen, City University of New York
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
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Biography becomes autobiography also,
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This review is from: Personal Impressions (Hardcover)
Isaiah Berlin writes his personal impressions of some of the most distinguished people of his time, many of whom he knew personally. He does this with his characteristic insight and intelligence. Among those he writes about are Churchill, Roosevelt, Chaim Weizmann the President of Israel, Pasternak, Akhmatova, Virginian Woolf and Edmund Wilson. In making these portraits Berlin also holds the mirror up to himself , and biography becomes autobiography also.This is most tellingly so perhaps in the story of his famous meeting with Akhmatova who had lived so long in fear and darkness before Berlin's turning point visit. We also see the man of ideas as a man of action in the help he gave to Weizmann in the struggle for Israel's founding.
Every one of these essays contains insights of great interest. This work is a pure delight, nectar and ambrosia for the mind.
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Inside This Book
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First Sentence:
IN THE now remote year 1928, an eminent English poet and critic published a book dealing with the art of writing English prose. Read the first page Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
All Souls, First World War, Soviet Union, United States, Virginia Woolf, Lloyd George, State of Israel, Winston Churchill, Anna Akhmatova, Maurice Bowra, Second World War, Eastern Europe, Foreign Office, Boris Leonidovich, Doctor Zhivago, Felix Frankfurter, New College, New York, Poem Without, Anna Andreevna, David Cecil, Edmund Wilson, Prime Minister, Richard Pares, Aldous Huxley New!
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
IN THE now remote year 1928, an eminent English poet and critic published a book dealing with the art of writing English prose. Read the first page Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
All Souls, First World War, Soviet Union, United States, Virginia Woolf, Lloyd George, State of Israel, Winston Churchill, Anna Akhmatova, Maurice Bowra, Second World War, Eastern Europe, Foreign Office, Boris Leonidovich, Doctor Zhivago, Felix Frankfurter, New College, New York, Poem Without, Anna Andreevna, David Cecil, Edmund Wilson, Prime Minister, Richard Pares, Aldous Huxley New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 81
books:
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74
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cite this book:
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- Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak on 5 pages
- Doctor Zhivago (Penguin Longman Reader Bk/Tape) by Bori Pasternak on 5 pages
- Doctor Zhivago (Everyman's Library) by Boris Pasternak on 5 pages
- War and peace : a novel by Count Leo Tolstoy (Modern Library Giants, 1.1) by Leo Tolstoy on page 165, page 219, and page 239
- Against the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas by Isaiah Berlin in Front Matter (1), Front Matter (2), and Front Matter (3)
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- The Guest from the Future: Anna Akhmatova and Isaiah Berlin by György Dalos on 7 pages
- Against the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas by Isaiah Berlin on 7 pages
- A.J. Ayer: A Life by Ben Rogers on 6 pages
- The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova by Anna Akhmatova on 4 pages
- Passion and Paradox: Intellectuals Confront the National Question by Joan Cocks on 4 pages
See all 74 books citing this book
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