"Sir Isaiah Berlin (1909–1997) English social historian, philosopher, essayist...Berlin never wrote a single-volume magnum opus but only essays. Like Karl Popper, he is widely acclaimed for his anti-authoritarian social philosophy and criticism of totalitarian doctrines.Berlin's most important contributions in social and political theory include the essays 'Historical Inevitability' (1954) and 'Two Concepts of Liberty' (1958) [jncluded in Four Essays on Liberty]." (from Pegasos, a literature related resource site based in Finland)

"A staunch advocate of pluralism in a century in which totalitarians and utopians claimed title to the one, single truth, Sir Isaiah considered the very notion that there could be one final answer to organizing human society a dangerous illusion that would lead to nothing but bloodshed, coercion, and deprivation of liberty.

Sir Isaiah defied classification. One of the leading scholars of the 20th century, he was also a bon vivant, a sought-after conversationalist, a serious opera buff, and an ardent Zionist. He shattered the popular concept of the Oxford don surrounded by dusty books and dry tutorials. His was an exuberant life crowded with joys—the joy of thought, the joy of music, the joy of good friends. Sir Isaiah seemed to know almost everyone worth knowing in the 20th century, among them Winston Churchill, Sigmund Freud, Nehru, Igor Stravinsky, Boris Pasternak, T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, Chaim Weizmann, Virginia Woolf, Edmund Wilson, Aldous Huxley, Bertrand Russell, and Felix Frankfurter.

Sir Isaiah liked to say that his reputation was built on a systematic overestimation of his abilities. In fact, his reputation rested securely on his lectures and essays—a cornucopia of western philosophical and political thought involving inquiries into the nature of liberty, the search for Utopia, the misconceptions of the Enlightenment, the innate human yearning for a homeland, the roots of nationalism, the underpinnings of fascism.

With the exception of his wartime diplomatic service and a number of visiting professorships, Sir Isaiah was associated with Oxford all his life. He began his career in 1932 there as a lecturer..." (from obituary in The New York Times, written by Marilyn Berger)

His work includes several volumes edited by his former graduate student, Henry Hardy: Russian Thinkers ( 1978); Concepts and Categories (1978); Against the Current (1979); Personal Impressions (1980) and The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters in the History of Ideas (1990), The Magus of the North: J.G. Hamann and the Origins of Modern Irrationalism (1993), The Sense of Reality: Studies in Ideas and Their History (1996), and The Proper Study of Mankind: An Anthology of Essays (1997).

In addition, Sir Isaiah was the author of many other books, including Karl Marx (1939), the "small masterpiece" The Hedgehog and the Fox: An Essay on Tolstoy's View of History (1953), The Age of Enlightenment (1956), Four Essays on Liberty (1969), and Vico and Herder: Two Studies in the History of Ideas (1976).