A short, serene volume. . . . Gordon avoids treating his subject in allegorical terms, in part because Benjamin always resisted conscription into a story larger than his own.Anahid Nersessian, New Yorker
Financial Times, What To Read in 2026
By reading Benjamins own texts against the grain of the hagiography that has come to surround him, Peter Gordon unwinds the myths, and in the most learned and informed fashion, gives us back the human being.Susan Buck-Morss, CUNY Graduate Center and Cornell University