Paul Johnson puts the private morality of some of our greatest thinkers under the spotlight. In this provocative book,Paul Johnson examines whether intellectuals are morally fit to give advice to humanity.How great is their respect for truth How do they apply their public principles to their private lives How loyal are they to their friends These questions are asked in a series of case studies.Rousseau,Shelley,Marx,Ibsen,Tolstoy,Hemingway,Bertrand Russell,Brecht,Sartre,Edmund Wilson,Victor Gollancz,Lillian Hellman,Norman Mailer and others are revealed in incisive portraits,as intellectuals both brilliant and contradictory.Paul Johnson puts the private morality of some of our greatest thinkers under the spotlight. In this provocative book,Paul Johnson examines whether intellectuals are morally fit to give advice to humanity.How great is their respect for truth How do they apply their public principles to their private lives How loyal are they to their friends These questions are asked in a series of case studies.Rousseau,Shelley,Marx,Ibsen,Tolstoy,Hemingway,Bertrand Russell,Brecht,Sartre,Edmund Wilson,Victor Gollancz,Lillian Hellman,Norman Mailer and others are revealed in incisive portraits,as intellectuals both brilliant and contradictory.
Paul Johnson was born in 1928. He edited the New Statesman in the 1960s and has written over forty books. His Modern Times, a history of the world from the 1920s to the 1990s, has been translated into more than fifteen languages. As well as a weekly column in the Spectator, he contributes to newspapers all over the world.