The Crooked Timber Of Humanity - Softcover

"Berlin has restored the history of ideas to its true place as a key to unlock the past and explain the present. His is a notable achievement, and this book sustains it" (Raymond Carr Spectator)

"The truest and the most moving of all interpretations of life that my own generation made" (Noel Annan)

"To read Isaiah Berlin is above all to listening to a voice, effervescent, quizzical, often self-mocking, but always full of gaiety and amusement" (John Dunn Times Literary Supplement)

"As a historian of ideas, he has no equal; and what he has to say is expressed in prose of exceptional lucidity and grace" (Anthony Storr Independent)

Isaiah Berlin is regarded by many as one of the greatest historians of ideas of his time. In The Crooked Timber of Humanity, he argues passionately, eloquently, and subtly, that what he calls 'the Great Goods' of human aspiration - liberty, justice, equality - do not cohere and never can. Pluralism and variety of thought are not avoidable compromises, but the glory of civilisation. In an age of increasing ideological fundamentalism and intolerance we need to listen to Isaiah Berlin more carefully than ever before.