The Open Society And Its Enemies.

POPPER, Karl R.

Item Number: 3442

London: George Routledge & Sons, 1945.

First editions of Popper’s magnum opus. Octavo, 2 volumes, original black cloth. Each volume is signed by Karl Popper on the front free endpaper. Each volume is near fine in very good dust jackets with some rubbing and wear. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell box. Signed first editions of The Open Society and Its Enemies are exceptionally rare.

One of the most important books of the twentieth century, Karl Popper's The Open Society and Its Enemies is an uncompromising defense of liberal democracy and a powerful attack on the intellectual origins of totalitarianism. Popper was born in 1902 to a Viennese family of Jewish origin. He taught in Austria until 1937, when he emigrated to New Zealand in anticipation of the Nazi annexation of Austria the following year, and he settled in England in 1949. Before the annexation, Popper had written mainly about the philosophy of science, but from 1938 until the end of the Second World War he focused his energies on political philosophy, seeking to diagnose the intellectual origins of German and Soviet totalitarianism. The Open Society and Its Enemies was the result. It was named by The Modern Library as one of the 100 greatest books of nonfiction of the twentieth century.