> But I have been dipping into Mehring's bio (Karl Marx: The Story Of His
> Life) lately and find it fascinating. Not sure of the original authoring date but
> he died in 1919. His writing is a treat, coming from a very different 19th
> century Germanic scholar background - and he was involved with Liebknecht and
> Luxemburg in the Spartacus movement. Probably, though, something to be read
> AFTER you have read a more recent version that takes into consideration what
> were unknown writings (the 1844 Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, for
> example) to Mehring.
I like the Mehring one also - although it is certainly out of date like you say, it's a political biography written by someone who was only one degree and generation removed from M&E. I read it in conjunction with that Pelican collection of the 'political writings', covering 1848, 'the class struggles in France' and the First International, and together they give a good sense of who was who and where all these polemics came from. Also Mehring has a cool chapter on Engels' adventures in 1848 and after, which ought to be made into a movie!
Mike Beggs