Hobbes: A Biography

Contemporary Review, Nov, 1999

A.P. Martinich. Cambridge University Press. [pounds]22.95/US$34.95. 390 pages. ISBN 0521-49583-0. Thomas Hobbes, the seventeenth-century political philosopher, remains one of the most challenging writers on politics in the English language. His conclusions still have the power to disturb because their logic is so clear and often irrefutable.

Less attention has been paid to his life than to his surviving work. In this superbly written biography Professor Martinich, already established as an expert authority on Hobbes the philosopher, gives us Hobbes the man and religious 'iconoclast,' the controversialist, the mathematician and the humanist. The author has succeeded in bringing Hobbes the man to life and in placing him within the context of his age. His enthusiasm for his subject keeps the text moving and presents Hobbes in a new light that must alter our appreciation of his contribution to the history of English philosophy and life.