This is a great, however brief, look into the life of one of the world's greatest minds. Hayman opens with a fleeting glance at Nietzsche's genealogy before diving into the seemingly bright life of the future philosopher. He cites Nietzsche's pendulum-esque nationalistic devotion prior to his near-death collapse from a horse. He then charts Nietzsche's intellectual progress from the life-altering secondhand bookstore find of Schopenhauer to the later critique of previous idols Wagner, Kant, and Renee. Hayman, however repetitiously (though nonetheless factually), outlines Nietzsche's incessant battle with illness throughout his life. The key to this text is that is does not attempt a definitive stance at the perpetual enigma as to the cause of Nietzsche's demise, but rather outlines possibilities starting from birth until his death. For those unfamiliar with the German titles of Nietzsche's works, it will require a bit of page flipping to the appendix until one grows accustomed to Hayman's methodology. Also, all passages from the philosopher's works are translated by Hayman that, in some cases, are clearer and more concise than the renounced Kaufmann readings. My only complaint is that Hayman didn't spend more pages in his great explication of the philosopher's life. I rate this alongside Monk's biography of Wittgenstein.

This biography is the most accurate and indeed, critical. It dealves into the life and thought of one of the greatest thinkers in Western Europe. Anyone who wishes to have a good introduction into Friedrich Nietzsche should read this book...by all means, read it!!

I have been reading, disecting, and deconstructing Artaud for well over ten years and find this volume to be indispensible. Well worth the price. The immedicacy and visceral quality of Artaud's words are captured on paper, and where as tapes of his anguished voice might crackle and fade in time, this first hand document of his perceptual experience is truly timeless. This is not only a firmly woven tapestry for those in the know, but also a good starting point for those wondering what all the fuss is about.

While other biographies spend time with external events, This book concentrates on Brech and his works. It shows his time in Weimar Germany and through the East Germany. Both his marriages are described.

There is an eight-page chronology to put the works in prospective.

Part One - Barvarian Beginnings

Part Two - Berlin

Part Three - Scandinavian Exile

Part Four - Brecht in Hollywood

Part Five - Towards the Schiffbauerdamm

Hayman does an excellent job of presenting the real de Sade. He reveals a gifted person whose attributions of sadism belong not to him but to the power structure of his day. Hayman writes of De Sade's struggle to prevail over his many unjust imprisonments with creative writing. This, with all else, is a much needed correction of the general misconcepton of the man and his life.

I use the British phrase because the author is British, and a playwright himself. This must be a new edition of one of the best guides to script analysis in theatre I've ever come across. I've used it as a teacher in drama classes, and I've used it to come up with "guidelines" for readers when I was a theatrical literary manager. It is also useful for playwrights to see why something does or does not work. It's short and wastes no time making its points-- meaty and readable. A must for any theatrical library.

If you don't know much about Nietzsche, then you should read this little book. I'm still reading it and I'm enjoying it very much!

This is clearly the definitive biography of Thomas Mann ...by perhaps this era's leading biographer .....to be sure there are several bios out there ....but having read the most recent two ....i must say they were merely an excursus compared to Mr. Heymans outstanding effort ! his is both comprehensive and perspicuous ....not an easy task when being an exegete of Mann's life and works ....Mann was both an accomplished author and prescient political analyst .....and led a long and complicated life .....which Mr. Heyman documents with unusual clarity and verve!.. of the three major biographies on T.Mann recently published ....his (heymans) is the best of the trio ....the other two being discursive and garbled thus confusing to the common reader by all means read this edition if you have any interest in T. Mann's work and life...it's COMPLEAT ! thankyou Mr. Heyman !

Ronald Hayman provides excellent insight into Sylvia Plath's life, effectively using much analysis of her poetry to tell her biography.

The main problem of writing a biography of Sylvia Plath is the roadblocks that are constantly being thrown out by her husband's controlling estates. Unlike other biographers, Hayman has managed to be honest and critical about who Plath is, and how she was treated by people around her, including her husband and his mistress. Hayman addresses critically and honestly Plath's husband controlling nature. He controlled her life when she was alive, but worse still he controlled her totally after she died. There are many crucial works and correspondences of Plath that were destroyed, or mysteriously disappeared (presumable by her husband). Hayman argues that these materials are extremely valuable to understand more Plath's life as suicide.

Hayman's biography, though well researched, is a grave disappointment. First, the author fails to offer a balanced picture of the varied and complex person of Jung. Instead, Hayman engages in a reductive enterprise and reduces Jung to little more than a caricature. Second, Hayman continues his reductionist approach when arguing that Jung's work amounted to little more than scouting out archetypes in the dreams of his patients and in world mythology. In this, Hayman misses the deeper aspects of Jung's work and ignores the epistemological significance of the manner in which Jung presaged post-modern and post-structuralist thought. Third, the biography is badly focused and organized because it leaps from scene to scene and person to person without logical reasons for doing so. Fourth, the style of the biography is troublesome; not only is the prose in need of vigor, but the grammatical structures are often troubling: i.e., the books is rife with sentences that contain pronouns that have no clear antecedents. Fifth, the biography fails to discuss a key aspect of Jung's life: his relationship with his children. Sixth, many of Hayman's assertions and conclusions about Jung are unfounded, unsupported, and misguided.

Other reviews have pointed out some serious problems with this book: the scattered telling of the story, the sometimes unclear writing, the fact that one does not come away with a very clear picture of Jung's thought even after 450 pages of summarizing his theories. But there is another reason I was disappointed in this book: namely, that Hayman is a Freudian who criticizes Jung through Freud's eyes (Read Louis Breger's "Freud: Darkness in the Midst of Vision" for an example of how bad an idea that is). While Hayman assumes as common sense that we accept the theories of the typically modern, sex-crazed, materialistic Freud, he criticizes Jung precisely for presuming to break with Freud, thereby assuring (in Hayman's mind) that Jung and Jungians will remain in the arena of madness, rather than mental health. Hayman quotes a psychoanylist, with marked approval, who says: "If [Jung's] main life's work was in the end to be founded on a personal and scientific incompatibility with Freud, there are those who believe, like myself, that this was a disaster, and in part an illusion, from which we suffer and will continue to do so until we have repaired the damage." (p. 213) In short, the only way to be an acceptable Jungian is to be a Freudian. As many of us have found the modern ethos of sex and materialism to be a dead end, and trying to re-think spirituality in an age of the dessicated fanaticism of fundamentalist religions hard enough in itself, a dependence on Freud is surely no help. If one need not acept Jung as if he were a god -- always the problem of Freudians in relation to their master -- at least Jung has pointed the way for many people to a view of life that is compatible with a regenerative spirituality, not just Freudian myths about repressed childhood trauma and the primacy of sexuality in self-understanding. Hayman's biography has the very desirable effect of presenting Jung as a man whose life was troubled by psychosis and full of the turn-of-the-century Spiritualism that tends no longer to be accepted as factual among thinking people. Worshippers of Jung doubtless don't like this aspect of the book. For myself, I found the manner of Jung's break with Freud -- his experiences of internal dialogue and vivid fantasy, his belief that sexuality is only one factor among many in human life, his refusal to submit to the enervating Freudian materialism as a final arbiter in all judgements, his wide-ranging interest in creation myths as opposed to Freud's reductive readings of Oepipus et al, his belief that we should explore the fantasies and delusions we encounter in life in relation to the world of archetypes rather than trying to extirpate them by analysis and replace them with Freud's own truncated little fantasies -- to be more creative and productive than if he had remained a Freudian true believer. But let's not worship Jung, either: reading Hayman may not make Jung quite clear, or an acceptable object of worship, but the former (along with the implicit Freudianism) is the real problem I had with his book, not the latter.

Sometimes I feel guilty for not starting at the beginning of a book like this and reading right through. Hayman removes such guilt by the curious expediant of neglecting to put his anecdotes into any coherent form. It hardly seems to matter where you start -- the author seemed to have trouble even putting individual chapters into order. One interesting theme he mentions was how Jung served as a link between pre-modern and post-modern spirituality. Neither this nor other themes were developed. But ultimately I forgave Hayman, mostly, because much of what I found was interesting, despite the mayhem. It is like dropping in on an eccentric friend at irregular and unscheduled intervals: you do get a feel for who the man is, perhaps as much because of as in spite of the disorder.

There were times when I found myself wondering, "Why did this guy write a book about a person for whom he seems to have so little respect?" (Being, apparently, rather skeptical of the occult side of Jung.) But in other scenes, Jung comes across as sane and sensible, and his insights perhaps of value. The author doesn't explain those insights in way that makes it very clear to me, but of course Jung can speak for himself on that. At one point, what appeared psychobabble -- or at least esoteria -- to an outsider like myself, flew thick and fast between Jung, Freud, wives, and girlfriends. The author tells us what the persons involved "really" had in mind. "What happened was they had unconsciously 'swallowed' part of one another's soul." Hmmmn. At times like that, the author comes across like the friend who was supposed to stay sober at the party, but took a few sips anyway.

Overall, I found much fault with this book, but interesting tidbits, and kept picking it up, till I read it through. There's some interesting stuff on Freud and other early psychological persons, as well. I am still not quite sure what to make of Jung's theories -- and have some theories of my own by which to consider them -- but Hayman has, at least, helped me to put those ideas in rough, if not entirely coherent, context. And I enjoyed the book. ...

This book offers little by way of truth, I'm afraid. Hayman gives a grossly distorted description of Adolf's childhood, his relationship with his parents, and the man he later became, among other points. The author's portrayal of Adolf Hitler throughout the book is wholly biased and much too negative (nothing new there). I gave him two stars, however, for touching on a few truths, although they were few and far between. Also, he occasionally admitted speculation on some points (although not nearly enough). He gathered his "information" from a number of sources, which I liked, but what I disagree with is his tendency to readily accept many of the negative pieces of gossip made public after Hitler's death, simply because they were negative. The true role of a historian is not to condemn, but to explain.

I give this 2 stars only for its historical information of Hitler himself. Most of which you can get from anyother book. I thought that this book barely started to unfold the history of Geli and Hitler. It's main focus was on Hitler with what seemed to be a few side thoughts about a realationship that was said to be the most meaningful in Hitler's life. It raised many questions and did not offer many answers. There are a few conflicts with previously written accounts of Hitler's sexual life. This relationship was surrounded by mystery and will continue to be surrounded by mystery when you are done reading.

Some people would criticize this book for not being the historical end all analysis of Hitler's relationship with his niece. I don't feel that's important. No one should base their opinions off of one book. This is just one of the many you should read on the subject. Ronald Hayman takes an approach that many others haven't by concluding that Hitler's abnormal relationship with his niece may have spawned the genocidal impulses latent within him. That's one man's opinion. And it's an enjoyable one to read as the author is very articulate. But don't leave your research here. Continue on. Others have written on the subject (who are just as biased as the sources Hayman uses). One must find their own opinion of what's out there and to do so you'll need to read this book.