The Power of Ideas

The Power of Ideas shows Isaiah Berlin at his most lucid and accessible. He was constitutionally incapable of writing with the opacity of the specialist, but these shorter, more introductory pieces provide the perfect starting-point for the reader new to his work. Those who are already familiar with his writing will also be grateful for this further addition to his collected essays.The linking theme, as in the case of earlier volumes, is the crucial social and political role - past, present and future - of ideas, and of their progenitors. Among the contents are 'My Intellectual Path', Berlin's last essay, a retrospective autobiographical survey of his main preoccupations; and 'Jewish Slavery and Emancipation', the classic statement of his Zionist views, which his readers have long wanted to see reprinted. The book exhibits the full range of his enormously wide expertise, and demonstrates the striking and enormously engaging individuality, as well as the power, of his own ideas.