List of Plates.

Preface.

Acknowledgements.

Illustration Acknowledgements.

Part I. Origins: Family, Childhood and Youth: School and University in Frankfurt am Main.

Family Inheritance: A Picture of Contracts.

1. Adorno’s Corsican Grandfather: Jean François, alias Giovanni Francesco.

2. Wiesengrund: The Jewish Heritage of his Father’s Romantic Name.

3. Between Oberrad and Amorbach.

4. Education Sentimentale.

Part II. A Change of Scene: Between Frankfurt, Vienna and Berlin: A Profusion of Intellectual Interests.

Commuting Between Philosophy and Music.

5. Against the Stream: The City of Frankfurt and its University.

6. A Man with Philosophical Qualities in the World of Viennese Music: The Danube Metropolis.

7. In Search of Career.

8. Music Criticism and Compositional Practice.

9. Towards a Theory of Aesthetics.

10. A Second Anomaly in Frankfurt: The Institute of Social Research.

Part III. Emigration Years: An Itellectual in Foreign Land.

A Twofold Exile: Intellectual Homelessness as Personal Fate.

11. The ‘Coordination" of the National Socialist Nation and Adorno’s Reluctant Emigration.

12. Between Academic and Authentic Concerns: From Philosophy Lecturer to Advanced Students in Oxford.

13. Writing Letters as an aid to Philosophical.

14. Learning by Doing: Adorno’s Path to Social Research.

15. Happiness in Misfortune: Adorno’s Years in California.

Part IV: Thinking the Unconditional and Enduring the Conditional.

The Explosive Power of Saying No.

16. Change of Scene: Surveying the Ruins.

17. Gaining Recognition for Critical Theory: Adorno’s Activities in the Late 1950s and Early 1960s.

18. Eating Bread: A Theory Devoured by Thought.

19. With his Back to the Wall.

Epilogue: Thinking Against Oneself.

Notes.

References and Bibliography.

Index.