This book is wide ranging, penetrating, innovative and extremely readable. It includes Berlin's famous essays on liberty, pluralism and nationalism as well as studies of figures such as Churchill and Roosevelt.

"First published in 1997 by Chatto & Windus Limited, United Kingdom"--T.p. verso.

The pursuit of the ideal -- Philosophical foundations. The concept of scientific history; Does political theory still exist? -- Freedom and determinism. 'From hope and fear set free'; Historical inevitability -- Political liberty and pluralism. Two concepts of liberty -- History of ideas. The counter-enlightenment; The originality of Machiavelli; The divorce between the sciences and the humanities; Herder and the enlightenment -- Russian writers. The hedgehog and the fox; Herzen and his memoirs; Conversations with Akhmatova and Pasternak -- Romanticism and nationalism in the modern age. The apotheosis of the romantic will; Nationalism : past neglect and present power -- Twentieth-century figures. Winston Churchill in 1940; President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.