Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm, Max Horkheimer, Franz Neumann, Theodor Adorno, Leo Lowenthal, Friedrich Pollock - the impact of the Institute of Social Research on the sociological, political and cultural thought of the twentieth century has been profound. Under its auspices an astonishing variety of subjects has been studied, from law in Western society to horoscope columns, from Stravinsky to China, from jazz to the sado-masochistic character. - The Dialectical Imagination is a major history of this monumental cultural and intellectual enterprise during its early years in Germany and in the United States. martin Jay traces the genesis of the Institute and its philosophy and examines the life and work of the extraordinary collection of men who served as its members.