Ranging from Zionism to the Enlightenment, to the Russian Intelligentia here is a welcome collection of Berlins most lucid and well-crafted essays orbiting around his first preoccupation - the potency of ideas. Together they construct a strong edifice that defends the need for intellectual history. With characteristic clarity Berlin tackles opaque subjects and renders them intelligible: his topics include Vissarion Belinsky, Alexander Herzen and G V Plekhanov as well as overarching concepts such as historicism, political realism and the idea of liberty. Berlin heeded the warning of the German poet Heine that 'philosophical concepts nurtured in the stillness of a professor's study could destroy a civilisation.' (Kirkus UK)