In The Spinoza Problem, Irvin Yalom spins fact and fiction into an unforgettable
psycho-philosophical novel. A psychiatrist with a deep interest in philosophica
l issues, Yalom jointly tells the story of the seventeenth-century thinker Baruc
h Spinoza, his philosophy and subsequent excommunication from the Jewish communi
ty, and his apparent influence on the Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg, whose ein
satzgruppe was dispatched during the Second World War to investigate a mysteriou
s "Spinoza Problem." Seamlessly alternating between Golden Age Amsterdam and Naz
i Germany, Yalom investigates the inner lives of these two enigmatic men in a ta
le of influence and anxiety, the origins of good and evil, and the philosophy of
freedom and the tyranny of terror.
