'Even the biographical individual is a social category', wrote
Adorno. 'It can only be defined in a living context together
with others.' In this major new biography, Stefan
Müller-Doohm turns this maxim back on Adorno himself and
provides a rich and comprehensive account of the life and work of
one of the most brilliant minds of the twentieth century.
This authoritative biography ranges across the whole of Adorno's
life and career, from his childhood and student years to his years
in emigration in the United States and his return to postwar
Germany. At the same time, Muller-Doohm examines the full range of
Adorno's writings on philosophy, sociology, literary theory, music
theory and cultural criticism. Drawing on an array of sources from
Adorno's personal correspondence with Horkheimer, Benjamin, Berg,
Marcuse, Kracauer and Mann to interviews, notes and both published
and unpublished writings, Muller-Doohm situates Adorno's
contributions in the context of his times and provides a rich and
balanced appraisal of his significance in the 20th Century as a
whole.
Müller-Doohm's clear prose succeeds in making accessible
some of the most complex areas of Adorno's thought. This
outstanding biography will be the standard work on Adorno for years
to come.
