Description: Berlin's "The Sense of Reality" made available, in the months before the author's death, an important body of previously unknown work by one of the century's leading historians of ideas, and one of the finest essayists writing in English.
Brief description: Isaiah Berlin (1909-97) was born in Riga, Latvia, and immigrated to England in 1921. At Oxford, he was a Fellow of New College and of All Souls, and founding president of Wolfson College.
Review Quotes:
"For anyone wanting to understand the history of ideas, this book will be indispensable." --John Gray, The New York Times Book Review
"He many erudite, but he is not academic. He addresses his essays to the general reader, and he speaks with such infectious energy that he sweeps us up and carries up with him into territory that had seemed inaccessible. He becomes everyman's guide to everything exciting in the history of ideas." --Robert Darnton, The New York Review of Books "If it were possible to add to a reputation already so considerable, these essays would do it...[They are the works of] urbanity, insight, profound scholarship and writerly elegance." --A.C. Grayling, Financial Times