Russell Winslow
"By way of a refreshingly clear and elegant prose styleöa quality so often lacking in the majority of secondary literature on HeideggeröBambach engages Heidegger's earlier philosophical propaedeutic by placing his works and language within their historical/political context."
Richard Wolin
"Heidegger's Roots shows that Charles R. Bambach has an excellent awareness of the relevant political context—the German ideology of the early 1930s, when philosophers and others were jockeying for position in order to align themselves intellectually with Hitler's Brown Revolution. I know of no other work that shows so convincingly and in such relevant detail how, from 1929 on, Heidegger's philosophy was inextricably wedded to questions of contemporary politics and history. Bambach's writing style is uncommonly lucid and edifying—a rare and welcome virtue in Heidegger scholarship. Heidegger's Roots goes beyond the existing literature on 'Heidegger and the political' in ways that are refreshing and insightful. It is a book that will be taken seriously by political philosophers, intellectual historians, Germanists, and continental philosophers alike."
Choice Magazine
Although Bambach (Graduate Center, CUNY) has taken on a topic that has received a great deal of attention—Heidegger's personal and philosophical engagement with Nazism—he nonetheless present a valuable and fresh perspective on well-trodden terrain.... What is truly remarkable about Bambach's study is the refusal to rush judgment.... Bambach, instead, carefully places the relevant texts not only in the development of Heidegger's own thought but also within the larger context of the pro-fascist academic discourse of the time. The latter is particularly crucial, for it is only on the basis of a larger understanding of this discourse that Heidegger's own unique position becomes understandable. Summing Up: Highly Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.
Roderick Stackelberg
"This is a scintillating work of intellectual history written with an understated eloquence, philosophical depth and subtlety, and close attention to historical detail. No previous book to my knowledge has provided such detailed contextualization of Heidegger's Denkweg during the Third Reich. This fascinating genealogy of Heidegger's mythology of being also has a lot to teach us about the appeal of National Socialism and the disconcerting coincidence of high culture and destructivity that has puzzled historians of Germany for so long.... That so high-minded, conscientious, and original a thinker could have been so convinced of the superiority of his own people's culture and of their mission to save the world, a judgment that turned out to be so terribly wrong, must give us all in twenty-first-century America pause."
Steven M. Stannish
"Charles Bambach... contends that Heidegger drew on the ideas of freethinkers such as Friedrich Hölderlin and Friedrich Nietzsche, as well as those of reactionaries like Oswald Spengler and Alfred Baeumler. The result was a personal form of national socialism. After World War II, Heidegger tried to conceal his dubious affiliations, but his philosophy remained exclusionary and ontologically racist."
