The first book-length account in English of Jacob Talmon and his work on humanism, the university and society, and the ideal role of professors and scientists.

Jacob Talmon: Combining histories and presents is not the biography of a historian. Rather, it is a discourse on a mind tormented by fear of the masses as well as the mistakes of the leadership. Talmon often applied his views on contemporary events and trends to his own actions as a humanist and historian. The changing role of the university, the decline of the liberal arts in favour of technology and the social sciences and the displacement of humanism by the market economy were of particular concern. His brilliant and paradoxically prophetic interactions with Arnold Toynbee, David Ben-Gurion, and Menahem Begin have been vindicated by the very history he sought to avoid. This new work in the English language makes Talmonic wisdom available for the first time to a much larger audience