Reinhard Mehring offers the English speaking world the first comprehensive intellectual biography of the highly controversial legal and political theorist, Carl Schmitt. Based on extensive archival research and a vast amount of unpublished material, Mehring identifies the psychological and emotional motivations that drove the intellectual endeavors of the notorious philosopher of "the political" and "the state of exception." Mehring demonstrates conclusively how Schmitt's struggles with, among other issues, his sexual desire and his obsession with the Jews, generated some of the most important, influential and dangerous political writings of the twentieth century. John P. McCormick, University of Chicago In this fascinating biography, Mehring has used Schmitt's only recently available diaries and calendar entries to lay bare the obsessions of this brilliant thinker -- often referred to as the Hobbes of the 20th century. Especially revealing are his struggles to shatter the Jew in him, which led him to aspire to become Hitler's pope with all that that implied. Politically naive about Nazism, he was severely attacked by the SS in 1936 and marginalized for, among other reasons, his pre-1933 close association with Jews and his anti-Nazism. George Schwab, President, National Committee on American Foreign Policy