Descartes: An Intellectual Biography

Adorno wrote, "Even the biographical individual is a social category." 'It can only be defined in the context of a living context with others.' Stefan Müller-Doohm, in this major new biography, applies this approach to Adorno himself, providing a rich and thorough portrait of one of the twentieth century's most creative thinkers. From Adorno's infancy and student years to his years of emigration in the United States and his return to postwar Germany, this definitive biography covers the entirety of his life and career. At the same time, Muller-Doohm looks at Adorno's entire body of work in philosophy, sociology, literary theory, music theory, and cultural critique. Muller-Doohm situates Adorno's contributions in the context of his times and provides a rich and balanced appraisal of his significance in the 20th Century as a whole, drawing on a variety of sources ranging from Adorno's personal correspondence with Horkheimer, Benjamin, Berg, Marcuse, Kracauer, and Mann to interviews, notes, and both published and unpublished writings. Müller-straightforward Doohm's style succeeds in making some of Adorno's most difficult ideas comprehensible. For years to come, this superb biography of Adorno will remain the classic study on the subject.