Tangled Paths

Unravels the complex life and personal struggles of influential art and cultural historian Aby Warburg.

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Tangled Paths tells the life story of Aby Warburg, one of the most influential historians of art and culture of the twentieth century. It also tells the story of a man who, throughout his life, struggled to assert his place in the world. Charting Warburg’s many projects and identities – ground-breaking historian, public intellectual, ethnographer, shrewd academic administrator and founder of a library – Hans C. Hönes explores not only the vagaries of an academic career but the personal demons of a man who relentlessly sought to live up to his own expectations. This biography – the first in English for over fifty years – presents an evocative and richly detailed portrait of Warburg’s personality and career, and of his attempts to make sense of the tangled paths of his life.