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Karl Polanyi (1886 - 1964) was one of the twentieth century´s most original interpreters of the market economy. His penetrating analysis of globalization´s disruptions and the Great Depression´s underlying causes still serves as an effective counterargument to free market fundamentalism. This biography shows how the major personal and historical events of his life transformed him from a bourgeois radical into a Christian socialist but also informed his ambivalent stance on social democracy, communism, the New Deal, and the shifting intellectual scene of postwar America.

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Gareth Dale´s new biography offers us a bracing reminder of a far richer world of socialist activity that once existed in much of the West. Nikil Saval, The Nation

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Gareth Dale is senior lecturer in politics and international relations at Brunel University, London. His other books include Karl Polanyi: The Limits of the Market (2010), Karl Polanyi: The Hungarian Writings (2016), and Green Growth: Ideology, Political Economy, and the Alternatives (2016).

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