Books: Marxist Mystery

KARL MARX: AN INTIMATE BIOGRAPHY

by Saul K. Padover

McGraw-Hill; 667 pages; $18.95

Since his death in 1883, Karl Marx has proved as great a scourge of biographers as he was of political opponents. The difficulties seem insoluble: the man has to be separated from the history that made him and the history that he made. Marx also has to be removed from the True Believers, who find him blameless, and the Great Haters, who see him with horns and a tail.

Saul K. Padover, distinguished American political scientist (Jefferson: A Biography, Thomas Jefferson and...

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