01543nam a22002057a 4500 OSt 20260804125150.0 260804b |||||||| |||| 00| 0 eng d 9780300216868 AACR-II 838.912 GOR Gordon, Peter E. 21320 Walter Benjamin: the pearl diver London Yale University Press 2026 203p. An accessible and authoritative biography of Walter Benjamin that guides the reader through the complexity of his intellectual legacy and the turbulence of his time Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) is widely considered one of the most creative cultural critics of the twentieth century. Esteemed for his literary acumen and capacious imagination, he developed a unique style of criticism—his friend Hannah Arendt called it pearl-diving—that sought out fragments of redemption in the ruins of bourgeois civilization. Award-winning author Peter E. Gordon tells Benjamin’s story in a vivid and poetic style, inviting the reader to look beyond the image of Benjamin as a tragic figure of German-Jewish history and portraying him as a complex personality of unique and multifaceted gifts. Tracing Benjamin’s life from his Berlin childhood to his Parisian exile, through the romanticism of the youth movements and the conflicts over modernism and Marxism, Gordon compellingly brings Benjamin to life. German literature 21321 Miscellaneous German minor authors 21322 ddc B 0 0 ddc 0 0 LBSNAA LBSNAA 2026-08-04 0 838.912 GOR 186359 2026-08-04 2026-08-04 B 361827 361827