Radio Benjamin

Radio Benjamin

  • Paperback

    + free ebook

    Regular price $24.95 Sale price $19.96
    Page redirects on selection
    Add to cart
    20% off
  • Ebook

    Regular price $9.99 Sale price $8.00
    Page redirects on selection
    Add to cart
    20% off

“The German critic was not only a theorist of the media – he was a gifted broadcaster as well.” —Financial Times

Walter Benjamin was fascinated by the impact of new technology on culture, an interest that extended beyond his renowned critical essays. From 1927 to ’33, he wrote and presented something in the region of eighty broadcasts using the new medium of radio. Radio Benjamin gathers the surviving transcripts, which appear here for the first time in English. This eclectic collection demonstrates the range of Benjamin’s thinking and his enthusiasm for popular sensibilities. His celebrated “Enlightenment for Children” youth programs, his plays, readings, book reviews, and fiction reveal Benjamin in a creative, rather than critical, mode. They flesh out ideas elucidated in his essays, some of which are also represented here, where they cover topics as varied as getting a raise and the history of natural disasters, subjects chosen for broad appeal and examined with passion and acuity.
Delightful and incisive, this is Walter Benjamin channeling his sophisticated thinking to a wide audience, allowing us to benefit from a new voice for one of the twentieth century’s most respected thinkers.

Reviews

  • A complex and brilliant writer.

    JM Coetzee
  • Walter Benjamin was one of the unclassifiable ones... whose work neither fits the existing order nor introduces a new genre.

    Hannah Arendt
  • Benjamin buckled himself to the task of revolutionary transformation… his life and work speak challengingly to us all.

    Terry Eagleton