Although it provides much information, the book manages to avoid insight, both into Benjamin's remarkable writing and into his difficult relationships, both human and cultural. It is hard to follow any thread through these pages. Its place is on the shelf, as a reference work for biographies we are still expecting.

Brodersen is a bibliographer, and this tome is a bibliographer's compendium. More troubling than the lack of original research are two lacunae: his failure to offer virtually any interpretation of Benjamin's writings and his consistent misjudgements about Benjamin's motives and relationships. Whether the Work of Art essay, the Trauerspiel book, or the essay of Goethe's Elective Affinities, texts are for Brodersen no more than dates in a chronicle of events. The abiding enigma of his steel-like bond with the younger, insistent Scholem, the dearth of information about the Paris years, his political and philosophical vacillations, his ambivalences about Jewishness and Judaism -- these and other fundamental questions are rarely answered, and if so, then impressionistically. Deeply unsatisfying are also the stamp-size, poorly reproduced photographs, especially for a work about one of the preeminent visual theorists of the early part of this century. The only serious biographical treatment of Benjamin, however fragmentary, still remains "Benjaminia", regrettably only available in German.

J would like pay with my credit card, but J need of an invoice duly receipted intestated to "Istituto Sperimentale Talassografico sez. di Messina dell'IAMC", Spianata S. Raineri, 86-98122 Messina. It is possible to have it?

I gave this book one star only becasue there was no 0 star rating, this is the worst math book I have ever used. It is poorly written, there are lots of mistakes( which to this date 05/29/03, that have not been correted on the authors' web page). This book was poorly organized, over priced, and had a weak book binding (my copy began to fall apart!!).
Please do not buy this book, unless you like to waste your money on useless material.

Lame