When Ernest Gellner was his early thirties, he took it upon himself to challenge the prevailing philosophical orthodoxy of the day, Linguistic Philosophy. Finding a powerful ally in Bertrand Russell, who provided the foreword for this book, Gellner embarked on the project that was to put him on the [...]

Ernest Gellner was a unique scholar whose work covered areas as diverse as social anthropology, analytical philosophy, the sociology of the Islamic world, nationalism, psychoanalysis, East European transformations and kinship structures. Despite this diversity, there is an exceptional degree of unit[...]

From reviews of the first edition: "Brilliant, provocative . . . a great book." New Statesman "An important book . . . It is a new starting line from which all subsequent discussions of nationalism will have to begin." New Society "A better explanation than anyone has yet offered of why nationalism [...]

Ernest Gellner was a multilingual polymath, able to set the agenda in the study of nationalism and the sociology of Islam. In this definitive biography, particular attention is paid to his Prague roots, and to debates with Michael Oakeshott, Isaiah Berlin, Charles Taylor, Noam Chomsky, Edward Said, [...]