At the Existentialist Café

    An excellent book that ignited my appreciation for biographical works. Bakewell was able to give an enthralling presentation of the philosophies and lives of many thinkers. History has never been a subject my brain is willing to engage with, yet through this book I felt connected with so many lives that no longer walk this earth. While they had ceased to experience the bloom of life, the world around them had come to life in my mind, through their eyes and through the words of Sarah Bakewell.    Bakewell was not afraid of using the first personal pronoun and relating her own thoughts and experiences. Impressively, this did not impede the light of “neutrality” shone on the biographees. Everything was presented such that you are invited to judge for yourself whatever opinions they held. You also leave the book with a dozens more on your to-read list.    Unfortunately I do not find the same impartiality with regard to the presentation of Communism in this otherwise exceptional book. Meticulously placed quotation marks, superficial degradation of Marxism as a mere “ideology”, portrayal of the biographees' communist involvement as simple mistakes, etc. Maybe this is an invariable crust imposed on the author by a modern neoliberal view of the world, one that we will dig through one day as the people under her pen have.