Books like 'Illuminations: Essays and Reflections'
Readers who enjoyed Illuminations: Essays and Reflections by Walter Benjamin also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
historical 20th century politics classics journalism university communism philosophical urban religion
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Duino Elegies by Rainer Maria Rilke
Rated: 4.39 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsWe have a marvelous, almost legendary image of the circumstances in which the composition of this great poem began. Rainer Maria Rilke was staying at Duino Castle, on a rocky headland of the Adriatic Sea near Trieste. One morning he walked out onto the battlements and climbed down to where the cliffs dropped sharply to the sea... -
![My Voice Because of You, by Pedro Salinas, Jorge Guillén]()
My Voice Because of You, by Pedro Salinas, Jorge Guillén
Rated: 4.36 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsEnglish, Spanish... -
![The Engineer of Human Souls by Josef Škvorecký]()
The Engineer of Human Souls by Josef Škvorecký
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsThe Engineer of Human Souls is a labyrinthine comic novel that investigates the journey and plight of novelist Danny Smiricky, a Czech immigrant to Canada. As the novel begins, he is a professor of American literature at a college in Toronto... -
![Petersburg by Andrei Bely, Olga Matich]()
Petersburg by Andrei Bely, Olga Matich
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsTaking place over a short, turbulent period in 1905, 'Petersburg' is a colourful evocation of Russia's capital—a kaleidoscope of images and impressions, an eastern window on the west, a symbol of the ambiguities and paradoxes of the Russian character...Categorized as:
classics urban politics university fiction 20th-century historical-fiction literary-fiction -
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![The Air-Conditioned Nightmare by Henry Miller]()
The Air-Conditioned Nightmare by Henry Miller
Rated: 3.81 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsIn 1939, after ten years as an expatriate, Henry Miller returned to the United States with a keen desire to see what his native land was really like—to get to the roots of the American nature and experience. He set out on a journey that was to last three years, visiting many sections of the country and making friends of all descriptions. The Air-Conditioned Nightmare is the result of that odyssey...Categorized as:
classics journalism philosophical politics 20th-century adult anthologies existentialism -
![The Bathroom by Jean-Philippe Toussaint]()
The Bathroom by Jean-Philippe Toussaint
Rated: 3.58 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsFirst published in France in 1985, The Bathroom wasJean-Philippe Toussaint's debut novel, and it heralded a new generationof innovative French literature. In this playful and perplexing book,we meet a young Parisian researcher who lives inside his bathroom... -
![My Century by Günter Grass]()
My Century by Günter Grass
Rated: 3.50 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsIn a work of great originality, Germany's most eminent writer examines the victories and terrors of the twentieth century, a period of astounding change for mankind. Great events and seemingly trivial occurrences, technical developments and scientific achievements, war and disasters, and new beginnings, all unfold to display our century in its glory and grimness... -
![An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s by Doris Kearns Goodwin]()
An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s by Doris Kearns Goodwin
Rated: 4.71 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsAn Unfinished Love A Personal History of the 1960s by Doris Kearns Goodwin, one of America’s most beloved historians, artfully weaves together biography, memoir, and history. She takes you along on the emotional journey she and her husband, Richard (Dick) Goodwin embarked upon in the last years of his life...Categorized as:
politics journalism philosophical non-fiction audiobook historical 20th-century friendship -
![The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert A. Caro]()
The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert A. Caro
Rated: 4.42 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsOne of the most acclaimed books of our time, winner of both the Pulitzer and the Francis Parkman prizes, The Power Broker tells the hidden story behind the shaping (and mis-shaping) of twentieth-century New York (city and state) and makes public what few have known: that Robert Moses was, for almost half a century, the single most powerful man of our time in New York, the shaper not only of the... -
![India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy by Ramachandra Guha, Edakochi Salimkumar]()
India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy by Ramachandra Guha, Edakochi Salimkumar
Rated: 4.38 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsA magisterial account of the pains, the struggles, the humiliations, and the glories of the world's largest and least likely democracy, Ramachandra Guha's India After Gandhi is a breathtaking chronicle of the brutal conflicts that have rocked a giant nation and the extraordinary factors that have held it together... -
![Master of the Senate by Robert A. Caro]()
Master of the Senate by Robert A. Caro
Rated: 4.35 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsThe most riveting political biography of our time, Robert A. Caro’s life of Lyndon B. Johnson, continues. Master of the Senate takes Johnson’s story through one of its most remarkable periods: his twelve years, from 1949 through 1960, in the United States Senate... -
![Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege, 1942–1943 by Antony Beevor]()
Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege, 1942–1943 by Antony Beevor
Rated: 4.32 of 5 stars · 28 ratingsThe Battle of Stalingrad was not only the psychological turning point of World War II: it also changed the face of modern warfare. Historians and reviewers worldwide have hailed Antony Beevor's magisterial Stalingrad as the definitive account of World War II's most harrowing battle. In August 1942, Hitler's huge Sixth Army reached the city that bore Stalin's name... -
![From Third World to First: The Singapore Story: 1965-2000 by Lee Kuan Yew, Henry Kissinger]()
From Third World to First: The Singapore Story: 1965-2000 by Lee Kuan Yew, Henry Kissinger
Rated: 4.44 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsFew gave tiny Singapore much chance of survival when it was granted independence in 1965... -
![Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 by Tony Judt]()
Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 by Tony Judt
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsAlmost a decade in the making, this much-anticipated grand history of postwar Europe from one of the world's most esteemed historians and intellectuals is a singular achievement... -
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![The Drowned and the Saved by Primo Levi]()
The Drowned and the Saved by Primo Levi
Rated: 4.39 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThe author tries to understand the rationale behind Auschwitz, Treblinka, Bergen-Belsen. Dismissing stereotyped images of brutal Nazi torturers and helpless victims, Levi draws extensively on his own experiences to delve into the minds and motives of oppressors and oppressed alike... -
![The Path to Power by Robert A. Caro]()
The Path to Power by Robert A. Caro
Rated: 4.31 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsThis is the story of the rise to national power of a desperately poor young man from the Texas Hill Country. The Path to Power reveals in extraordinary detail the genesis of the almost superhuman drive, energy & ambition that set LBJ apart... -
![Journey into the Whirlwind by Evgenia Ginzburg]()
Journey into the Whirlwind by Evgenia Ginzburg
Rated: 4.38 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsEugenia Ginzburg's critically acclaimed memoir of the harrowing eighteen years she spent in prisons and labor camps under Stalin's ruleBy the late 1930s, Eugenia Semyonovna Ginzburg had been a loyal and very active member of the Communist Party for many years... -
![Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Forty-Year Rivalry That Unraveled Culture, Religion, and Collective Memory in the Middle East by Kim Ghattas]()
Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Forty-Year Rivalry That Unraveled Culture, Religion, and Collective Memory in the Middle East by Kim Ghattas
Rated: 4.38 of 5 stars · 16 ratings“[A] sweeping and authoritative history" (The New York Times Book Review), Black Wave is an electrifying and audacious narrative examination of how the modern Middle East unraveled and why it started with the pivotal year of 1979... -
![The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer]()
The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Rated: 4.27 of 5 stars · 28 ratingsOne of the most important theologians of the twentieth century illuminates the relationship between ourselves and the teachings of Jesus in this classic text on ethics, humanism, and civic duty... -
![The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs]()
The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsA direct and fundamentally optimistic indictment of the short-sightedness and intellectual arrogance that has characterized much of urban planning in this century, The Death and Life of Great American Cities has, since its first publication in 1961, become the standard against which all endeavors in that field are measured... -
![Black Power: The Politics of Liberation by Kwame Ture, Charles V. Hamilton]()
Black Power: The Politics of Liberation by Kwame Ture, Charles V. Hamilton
Rated: 4.36 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsIn 1967, this revolutionary work defined a phrase that had become a central part of the Civil Rights vocabulary. In Black Power, Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) and Charles V. Hamilton exposed the depths of systemic racism in this country and provided a viable political framework for reform...Categorized as:
politics communism classics non-fiction philosophy social-commentary racism revolution -
![The Best and the Brightest by David Halberstam]()
The Best and the Brightest by David Halberstam
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsDavid Halberstam's masterpiece, the defining history of the making of the Vietnam tragedy, with a new Foreword by Senator John McCain... -
![Escape from Freedom by Erich Fromm]()
Escape from Freedom by Erich Fromm
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsIf humanity cannot live with the dangers and responsibilities inherent in freedom, it will probably turn to authoritarianism. This is the central idea of Escape from Freedom, a landmark work by one of the most distinguished thinkers of our time, and a book that is as timely now as when first published in 1941...Categorized as:
classics communism philosophical politics religion university 20th-century audiobook -
![Human Action: A Treatise on Economics by Ludwig von Mises]()
Human Action: A Treatise on Economics by Ludwig von Mises
Rated: 4.31 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsIn Human Action, Mises starts from the ideas set forth in his Theory and History that all actions and decisions are based on human needs, wants, and desires and continues deeper and further to explain how studying this human action is not only a legitimate science (praxeology) but how that science is based on the foundation of free-market economics... -
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![Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America (America: A Cultural History, Vol. I) by David Hackett Fischer]()
Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America (America: A Cultural History, Vol. I) by David Hackett Fischer
Rated: 4.31 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThis book is the first volume in a cultural history of the United States, from the earliest English settlements to our own time. It is a history of American folkways as they have changed through time, and it argues a thesis about the importance for the United States of having been British in its cultural origins...Categorized as:
classics politics religion university 20th-century audiobook colonization early-modern -
![Politics and the English Language by George Orwell]()
Politics and the English Language by George Orwell
Rated: 4.28 of 5 stars · 18 ratings'Politics and the English Language' is widely considered Orwell's most important essay on style. Style, for Orwell, was never simply a question of aesthetics; it was always inextricably linked to politics and to truth.'All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer... -
![The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914-1991 by Eric J. Hobsbawm]()
The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914-1991 by Eric J. Hobsbawm
Rated: 4.28 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsDividing the century into the Age of Catastrophe, 1914-1950, the Golden Age, 1950-1973, and the Landslide, 1973-1991, Hobsbawm marshals a vast array of data into a volume of unparalleled inclusiveness, vibrancy, and insight, a work that ranks with his classics The Age of Empire and The Age of Revolution. Includes 32 pages of photos... -
![Essays by George Orwell]()
Essays by George Orwell
Rated: 4.28 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsA generous and varied selection–the only hardcover edition available–of the literary and political writings of one of the greatest essayists of the twentieth century... -
![Unti on Vietnam by Max Hastings]()
Unti on Vietnam by Max Hastings
Rated: 4.28 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsAn absorbing and definitive modern history of the Vietnam War from the acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of The Secret War.Vietnam became the Western world’s most divisive modern conflict, precipitating a battlefield humiliation for France in 1954, then a vastly greater one for the United States in 1975...Categorized as:
classics communism journalism politics 20th-century 21st-century ancient-civilization audiobook -
![Huế 1968: A Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam by Mark Bowden]()
Huế 1968: A Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam by Mark Bowden
Rated: 4.28 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsIn the early hours of January 31, 1968, the North Vietnamese launched over one hundred attacks across South Vietnam in what would become known as the Tet Offensive. The lynchpin of Tet was the capture of Hue, Vietnam?s intellectual and cultural capital, by 10,000 National Liberation Front troops who descended from hidden camps and surged across the city of 140,000...
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