This episode of The Dig is brought to you by our supporters on patreon.com and by Verso Books,

which has loads of great left-wing titles, perfect for dig listeners like you. One new book

that might be of interest is Grand Hotel Abyss, The Lives of the Frankfurt School by Stuart Jeffries.

Who were the Frankfurt School and why do they matter today?

In 1923, a group of young radical German thinkers and intellectuals came together in Frankfurt,

determined to explain the workings of the modern world.

Among the most prominent members of what became the Frankfurt School

were the philosophers Walter Benjamine, Theodore Adorno,

Max Horkheimer, and Herbert Marcuse.

Not only would they change the way we think,

but also the subjects we deem worthy of intellectual investigation.

Their lives, like their ideas, profoundly, sometimes tragically, reflected and shaped

the shattering events of the 20th century.

Grand Hotel Abyss combines biography, philosophy, and storytelling to reveal how the Frankfurt

thinkers gathered in hopes of understanding the politics of culture during the rise of fascism.

By taking popular culture seriously as an object of study, whether it was film, music, ideas,

or consumerism, the Frankfurt School elaborated upon the nature

and crisis of our mass-produced mechanized society.

Grand Hotel Abyss shows how much these ideas still tell us about our age of social media

and runaway consumption.

Grand Hotel Abyss, The Lives of the Frankfurt School, by Stuart Jeffreys.

Out now from Verso Books.

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