Tangled Paths: A Life of Aby Warburg

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.