The Value of the Individual

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"The project Weintraub sets for himself could hardly be more ambitious: nothing less than a history of Western culture from classical antiquity to the early 19th century, traced in evolving conceptions of the individual and changing attitudes toward individuality. It is the first serious attempt in English to write the philosophical, psychological, cultural history of the West out of autobiographies, and while the book may remain an essay, the boldness and the scope of the undertaking need no emphasis. It is not only for its boldness and scope, however, that Weintraub's book should be praised: there are a hundred felicities of historical understanding and critical insight scattered along the way. . . . No one else writing about autobiography and individuality has anything like the historian's perspective Weintraub commands." (---James Olney, New Republic