"This is an exceptional book. Hirschman's intellectual and political journey is described with sharpness and perspicacity. Family life, cultural encounters, and the imprints of a lifetime highlight the importance and significance of one of the most creative intellectuals of the twentieth century, who had a profound influence on so many people around the world, including myself."--Fernando Henrique Cardoso, former president of Brazil "From the dying days of the Weimar Republic to the fall of the Berlin Wall, Albert Hirschman was a witness to the political turbulence of the twentieth century, shaping its intellectual trajectory while resisting overarching theories and academic convention at every turn. Meticulously researched, gracefully written, and deeply moving, this biography shines a light on not only one of the most fertile minds of the century, but the entire political and intellectual history of the period."--Dani Rodrik, Harvard University "Worldly Philosopher is a brilliant book. It is at once a thrilling story, an inspiring and melancholy intellectual biography, and a history of the shifting involvements of social science in twentieth-century public life."--Emma Rothschild, author of The Inner Life of Empires: An Eighteenth-Century History "Albert Hirschman is one of the most distinguished social scientists of the past half century. He has led an exciting and exemplary life, and Jeremy Adelman has researched and written an exhaustive biography. We are all in Adelman's debt for having followed Hirschman's journey, thoroughly and with sympathy."--Charles S. Maier, author of Among Empires: American Ascendancy and Its Predecessors