"To compensate a little for the treachery and weakness of my memory, so extreme that it has happened to me more than once to pick up again, as recent and unknown to me, books which I had read carefully a few years before . . . I have adopted the habit for some time now of adding at the end of each book . . . the time I finished reading it and the judgment I have derived of it as a whole, so that this may represent to me at least the sense and general idea I had conceived of the author in reading it." (Montaigne, Book II, Essay 10 (publ. 1580))
Karl Marx: A Life (Francis Wheen, 2001)
Biography written after the demise of communism.
Focuses on early radical days in Germany; dealing with Prussian authorities; moves to Paris and eventually to London.
Jenny = wife; noble birth.
Brilliant; constantly out of money, constantly supported by Engels.
Several children, several early deaths; fairly regular episodes of poor health; procrastinator as a writer (esp. w/r/t Capital).
Pretty much tried to (and did) live a bourgeois lifestyle.
Effective in the various socialist organizations but seldom got along well for long with folks. He was around for the 1848 revolutions; admired Darwin; became well known in England after writing a piece regarding the commune that ran France following the defeat to Bismark at Sedan. Died in early 1880s. Engels had to put together volumes 2 and 3 of Capital.
Biography written after the demise of communism. 
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