Isaiah Berlin's intellectual biography of Karl Marx has long been recognized as one of the best concise accounts of the life and thought of the man who had, in Berlin's words, a more "direct, deliberate, and powerful" influence on mankind than any other nineteenth-century thinker. A brilliantly lucid work of synthesis and exposition, the book introduces Marx's ideas and sets them in their context, explains why they were revolutionary in political and intellectual terms, and paints a memorable portrait of Marx's dramatic life and outsized personality. Berlin takes readers through Marx's years of adolescent rebellion and post-university communist agitation, the personal high point of the 1848 revolutions, and his later years of exile, political frustration, and intellectual effort. Critical yet sympathetic, Berlin's account illuminates a life without reproducing a legend. New features of this thoroughly revised edition include references for Berlin's quotations and allusions, Terrell Carver's assessment of the distinctiveness of Berlin's book, and a revised guide to further reading.

Editor's Preface to the Fifth Edition xi
Foreword by Alan Ryan xix
Preface to the Fourth Edition xxix
Note to the Third Edition xxxiii
Note to the First Edition xxxv
1 Introduction 1
2 Childhood and Adolescence 22
3 The Philosophy of 'The Spirit' 33
4 The Young Hegelians 57
5 Paris 76
6 Historical Materialism 112
7 1848 149
8 Exile in London: The First Phase 168
9 The International 205
10 'The Red Terror Doctor' 220
11 Last Years 248
Afterword by Terrell Carver 267
Guide to Further Reading by Terrell Carver 291
Index 297