Wolfram Eilenberger was the founder and for many years Editor-in-Chief of Philosophie Magazin. He has taught philosophy at the University of Toronto, Indiana University, the Berlin University of the Arts and ETH Z rich. This book, his ninth, was a bestseller on publication in Germany, where it won the prestigious Bayerischer Buchpreis, as well as Spain and Italy, and it has been translated into more than twenty languages.
A tremendous feat of scholarship but also a technical masterpiece, knitting together the four men's love lives, money troubles, ontological anxieties and the wider ferment of the Weimar republic with uncommon dexterity -- Oliver Moody * The Times * Splendid, highly entertaining, attentive -- Jonathan Derbyshire * Financial Times * Magnificent, elegantly composed and beautifully narrated -- David Motadel * The Times Literary Supplement * Eilenberger's survey of high thoughts and low politics among German-language philosophers of the 1920s is a salutary tale for today, not just a gripping panorama of century-old dreams and feuds * Economist * Accessible and deeply human ... He draws these four intellectual magi out of the shadows of their writings -- John Kaag * The New York Times * Like any great story, Eilenberger's is not made up, but retrieved. Events have a way of narrating themselves when they encounter a gifted storyteller -- Costica Bradatan * Los Angeles Review of Books * A book of riches - full of stories as well as ideas, all brought together with a fine light touch -- Sarah Bakewell