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Karl Polanyi (1886�1964) was one of the twentieth century�s most original interpreters of the market economy. His penetrating analysis of globalization�s disruptions and the Great Depression�s underlying causes still serves as an effective counterargument to free market fundamentalism. In this first full biography of the intellectual�s life and work, we learn how personal and historical events str... More

Karl Polanyi (1886�1964) was one of the twentieth century�s most original interpreters of the market economy. His penetrating analysis of globalization�s disruptions and the Great Depression�s underlying causes still serves as an effective counterargument to free market fundamentalism. In this first full biography of the intellectual�s life and work, we learn how personal and historical events structured Polanyi�s clear-eyed analyses and complex convictions. He began his career as a bourgeois radical but transitioned into a Christian socialist with ambivalent views on social democracy, communism, the New Deal, and the intellectual provocations of postwar America.

The narrative begins with Polanyi�s childhood in the Habsburg Empire and his involvement with the Great War and Hungary�s postwar revolution. It connects Polanyi�s idealistic radicalism to the political promise and intellectual ferment of Red Vienna and the horror of fascism. The book revisits Polanyi�s oeuvre in English, German, and Hungarian, includes exhaustive research in five archives, and features interviews with Polanyi�s daughter, students, and colleagues, clarifying the contradictory aspects of the thinker�s work. These personal accounts also shed light on Polanyi�s network of scholars, Christians, atheists, journalists, hot and cold warriors, and socialists of all stripes. Offering a unique portal into an epoch�s ruptures, tensions, and upheavals, this biography reflects and condenses extraordinary times through the life of one of its most engaged witnesses.

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