Abstract

Leonard Krieger has long been revered as a contemporary master historian. With an eye toward placing his critical achievements before an expanded readership, he helped compile this core collection of his most important essays. Together these essays bring under a single cover the key themes and ideas of his life's work to serve as a handbook for intellectual history and historians of every stripe. This book reflects Krieger's conviction that the value of intellectual history is as a source of orientation in a world of information overload. In Krieger's hands, intellectual history has stressed "thinking-through" the relations between ideas and events rather than the compilation and recapitulation of mere facts and historical categories. The essays in this collection cover a range of topics, including history of ideas, intellectual history, early modern political history, German political history, Hegel, Marx, and more. Many of these essays are already classics of historical scholarship. With the demise of the Soviet Union and state-sponsored Marxism, and with the reunification of Germany, Krieger's history takes on new relevance and a renewed importance. With a splendid introduction by Michael Ermath, and an extensive bibliography of Krieger's most important books and essays, this is a "must read" for every serious student of modern history. Leonard Krieger was University Professor Emeritus in the Department of History at the University of Chicago until his death in 1990.