Synopses & Reviews
"This is an exceptional book. Hirschman's intellectual and political journey is described with sharpness and perspicacity. Family life, cultural encounters, and the imprints of a lifetime highlight the importance and significance of one of the most creative intellectuals of the twentieth century, who had a profound influence on so many people around the world, including myself."
--Fernando Henrique Cardoso, former president of Brazil"From the dying days of the Weimar Republic to the fall of the Berlin Wall, Albert Hirschman was a witness to the political turbulence of the twentieth century, shaping its intellectual trajectory while resisting overarching theories and academic convention at every turn. Meticulously researched, gracefully written, and deeply moving, this biography shines a light on not only one of the most fertile minds of the century, but the entire political and intellectual history of the period."--Dani Rodrik, Harvard University
"Worldly Philosopher is a brilliant book. It is at once a thrilling story, an inspiring and melancholy intellectual biography, and a history of the shifting involvements of social science in twentieth-century public life."--Emma Rothschild, author of The Inner Life of Empires: An Eighteenth-Century History
"Albert Hirschman is one of the most distinguished social scientists of the past half century. He has led an exciting and exemplary life, and Jeremy Adelman has researched and written an exhaustive biography. We are all in Adelman's debt for having followed Hirschman's journey, thoroughly and with sympathy."--Charles S. Maier, author of Among Empires: American Ascendancy and Its Predecessors
Review
"[A] massive, erudite biography."--Roger Lowenstein, Wall Street Journal
Review
This is the book I have looked forward to most all year and so far it does not disappoint. Roger Lowenstein - Wall Street Journal
Review
Adelman's engrossing biography illustrates how Hirschman's global background, natural linguistic ability, education, and worldly experiences shaped his thoughts and enabled his thinking 'outside the box' to arrive at original and often provocative ideas. . . . Hirschman's story will appeal to many general readers, but especially to economists. Tyler Cowen - Marginal Revolution
Review
"[An] astonishing and moving biography. . . . Hirschman's work is more than interesting enough to justify a book (or two, or ten), but Adelman's achievement is to demonstrate, in novelistic detail, that he also lived an astounding life, full of narrow paths and ridiculously improbable twists and turns."--Cass Sunstein, New York Review of Books
Review
[A] massive, erudite biography. New York Review of Books
Review
Worldly Philosopher will be the definitive work on Hirschman for some time. . . . If you liked Edmund de Waal's The Hare with Amber Eyes, you will find Adelman's story of Hirschman's early life riveting--a book-club quality read. . . . Worldly Philosopher is a prodigious piece of research, lovingly told and immensely worthwhile for the new light it sheds on the odyssey of a writer whose small ideas add up to major insights. Library Journal
Review
Adelman's biography does a thorough job in shedding light not just on the academic and intellectual prowess of the great thinker, but also in informing the reader about the man whose life away from the intellectual world exhibited the same milieu of refreshing variety. Robert Kuttner - American Prospect
Review
"[A] hugely engaging . . . epic."--Justin Fox, New York Times Book Review
Review
"[A] biography worthy of the man. Adelman brilliantly and beautifully brings Hirschman to life, giving us an unforgettable portrait of one of the twentieth century's most extraordinary intellectuals. . . . [M]agnificent."--Malcolm Gladwell, New Yorker
Review
One of Financial Times (Alphachat)'s Econ Books of the Year for 2013
Review
"[T]he winner [Enlightened Economist prize this year] is Jeremy Adelman's The Worldly Philosopher, a biography of Albert Hirschman. Hirschman's life story is extraordinary, and his early years make for a gripping tale. What I particularly enjoyed, though, was the portrait of an economist whose economics had a context in the realities of the countries Hirschman studied, their history and politics and culture, and in his wide reading in philosophy and other subjects. . . . A worthy winner--congratulations to Professor Adelman!"--Diane Coyle, Enlightened Economist
Review
Winner of the 2014 Joseph J. Spengler Best Book Prize, History of Economics Society
One of Bloomberg/Businessweek Best Books of 2013, selected by Ollie Rehn
One of Financial Times (Alphachat)'s Econ Books of the Year for 2013
One of The Guardian Best Books of 2013, chosen by Malcolm Gladwell
Honorable Mention for the 2013 PROSE Award in Biography and Autobiography, Association of American Publishers
Synopsis
The life and times of one of the most provocative thinkers of the twentieth century
Worldly Philosopher chronicles the times and writings of Albert O. Hirschman, one of the twentieth century's most original and provocative thinkers. In this gripping biography, Jeremy Adelman tells the story of a man shaped by modern horrors and hopes, a worldly intellectual who fought for and wrote in defense of the values of tolerance and change. This is the first major account of Hirschman's remarkable life, and a tale of the twentieth century as seen through the story of an astute and passionate observer. Adelman's riveting narrative traces how Hirschman's personal experiences shaped his unique intellectual perspective, and how his enduring legacy is one of hope, open-mindedness, and practical idealism.
-- "Library Journal"
Synopsis
Worldly Philosopher chronicles the times and writings of Albert O. Hirschman, one of the twentieth century's most original and provocative thinkers. In this gripping biography, Jeremy Adelman tells the story of a man shaped by modern horrors and hopes, a worldly intellectual who fought for and wrote in defense of the values of tolerance and change.
Born in Berlin in 1915, Hirschman grew up amid the promise and turmoil of the Weimar era, but fled Germany when the Nazis seized power in 1933. Amid hardship and personal tragedy, he volunteered to fight against the fascists in Spain and helped many of Europe's leading artists and intellectuals escape to America after France fell to Hitler. His intellectual career led him to Paris, London, and Trieste, and to academic appointments at Columbia, Harvard, and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He was an influential adviser to governments in the United States, Latin America, and Europe, as well as major foundations and the World Bank. Along the way, he wrote some of the most innovative and important books in economics, the social sciences, and the history of ideas.
Throughout, he remained committed to his belief that reform is possible, even in the darkest of times.
This is the first major account of Hirschman's remarkable life, and a tale of the twentieth century as seen through the story of an astute and passionate observer. Adelman's riveting narrative traces how Hirschman's personal experiences shaped his unique intellectual perspective, and how his enduring legacy is one of hope, open-mindedness, and practical idealism.
Synopsis
Worldly Philosopher chronicles the times and writings of Albert O. Hirschman, one of the twentieth century's most original and provocative thinkers. In this gripping biography, Jeremy Adelman tells the story of a man shaped by modern horrors and hopes, a worldly intellectual who fought for and wrote in defense of the values of tolerance and change. This is the first major account of Hirschman's remarkable life, and a tale of the twentieth century as seen through the story of an astute and passionate observer. Adelman's riveting narrative traces how Hirschman's personal experiences shaped his unique intellectual perspective, and how his enduring legacy is one of hope, open-mindedness, and practical idealism.
About the Author
Jeremy Adelman is the Walter Samuel Carpenter III Professor of Spanish Civilization and Culture and director of the Council for International Teaching and Research at Princeton University. His books include Worlds Together, Worlds Apart: A History of the World and Sovereignty and Revolution in the Iberian Atlantic (Princeton).
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction Mots Justes 1
1 The Garden 16
2 Berlin Is Burning 52
3 Proving Hamlet Wrong 85
4 The Hour of Courage 119
5 Crossings 153
6 Of Guns and Butter 187
7 The Last Battle 219
8 The Anthill 252
9 The Biography of a File 284
10 Colombia Years 295
11 Following My Truth 325
12 The Empirical Lantern 353
13 Sing the Epic 382
14 The God Who Helped 415
15 The Cold Monster 455
16 Man, the Stage 489
17 Body Parts 525
18 Disappointment 531
19 Social Science for Our Grandchildren 567
20 Reliving the Present 599
Conclusion Marc Chagall's Kiss 639
Afterword Sailing into the Wind 653
Notes 659
Bibliographic Essay 699
Index 709