The Biography Famous: An Intellectual Autobiography within a Biography

Toward the end of a distinguished scholarly career in the field of political science, Alfred G. Meyer, a renowned authority Marxism, the communist movement, and the Soviet political system, wrote two books. One was a biography of Friedrich Engels, the co-founder of the communist movement, and the other was a memoir that looked back on his own life and career. The memoir was lively and entertaining, full of sharply drawn, humorous observations of the people he met during his life. The biography provided a humanistic view of a historical figure whose life is commonly analyzed in political terms. The Biography Famous merges these two manuscripts by taking the chapters of Meyer's memoir that focused on his career as a political scientist during the Cold War and juxtaposing them with the Engels biography. The Biography Famous challenges commonly held assumptions about the communist movement and its founders, presenting both Marx and Engels in a human light, delving into their cooperative relationship, and placing them within the Romantic era in which they lived. It is ideally suited for use in introductory college and university courses on political science or Marxism. It will also be of interest to people wishing to know more about the lives and careers of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and the origins of the communist movement, and is a valuable adjunct their own writings. It also offers a glimpse of the field of political science during the heyday of research on the Soviet Union, sheds light on the academic culture and student counterculture in the U.S. during the 60s, and provides an inspirational model for the teaching profession. Finally, The Biography Famous is a radical experiment in portraiture - an intellectual self-portrait of a scholar rendered with the help of the picture he drew of his historical subject.