"Who was Zygmunt Bauman? The late sociologist, known throughout the world for his path-breaking work on liquid modernity, had a biography. He was a Polish Jew, a soldier, a refugee. He had a whole life before Leeds. Izabela Wagner's great achievement is to recover this other Bauman. This book will change the way we see Bauman, forever."
Peter Beilharz, La Trobe University "This is a brilliant biography of an extraordinary intellectual. Izabela Wagner, a distinguished sociologist and intellectual historian, has found her subject. Zygmunt Bauman’s life embodies a paradigmatic 20th century East-European trajectory. Framed by Hitler’s and Stalin’s totalitarianisms, it is a story of an attempted assimilation by a bourgeois Jewish family, engagement with Communism by the children's generation, disillusionment and exile. In Bauman’s case, of course, this has been accompanied by a lifetime of influential reflection on the conditions and characteristics of modern society. A fascinating read."
Jan T. Gross, Princeton University "Izabela Wagner’s biography of Bauman is impressively erudite, exquisitely researched, and brings its subject vividly to life… an indispensable book."
Australian Book Review
"The lives of sociologists, for the most part, tend not to be wildly eventful. But this was not the case with Bauman. […] Izabela Wagner's biography of Bauman is impressively erudite, exquisitely researched, and brings its subject vividly to life. […I]n it, you will find a painstakingly comprehensive account of Bauman's intellectual formation and his daring originality, a kind of voyage around the nature of his sociological enterprise, and a celebration of a truly global public intellectual."
Anthony Elliott, Australian Book Review