This is a fascinating expedition into evolving intellectual friendships between very different men and the letters through which they argued, agreed and disagreed. Eiland plumbs the dramas of argument, shifting power and sides taken to great effect. Nor does he forget to bring in Benjamin's other redoubtable champions, his first wife, the writer and translator, Dora Kellner, Gretel Karplus Adorno, and Hannah Arendt. I enjoyed it very much.

Lisa Appignanesi, author of Everyday Madness: On Grief, Anger, Loss and Love (2018)

Philosophy is often associated with friendship. Strange Friends beautifully traces this aspiration through the correspondence of Scholem, Benjamin, Adorno, and others. Providing a riveting, thoughtful, and meticulous account of how friendship was sought by three determined individuals during times of devastating upheaval and disappointment, Eiland's book will fascinate readers interested in their works, the times in which they lived, and the possibilities and challenges for philosophical friendship.

Brendan Moran, Professor of Philosophy, University of Calgary, Canada

This fascinating book shows us how to read the letters exchanged by Benjamin, Adorno, and Scholem as an estranging medium, even among friends. This is especially illuminating from the perspective of our own age in which letter writing is disappearing. Along the way, Howard Eiland introduces us to what becomes the enigmatic focus of a “strange friendship” – the philosophical, political, and personal matters that held these individuals together without requiring or resulting in consensus.

Kevin McLaughlin, George Hazard Crooker Professor of English, Comparative Literature, and German Studies, Brown University, USA

Strange Friends is required reading for anyone interested in modern German-Jewish thought, or indeed in modern intellectual history. Eiland's insightful, nuanced reading of the epistolary exchanges between Adorno, Benjamin, and Scholem animates a study that is in equal parts biography and philosophical analysis. He presents characterizations of these three brilliant, prickly figures that surpass anything yet written; and these analyses of the character of these three men enable soundings of key debates-Benjamin and Scholem on the role of mysticism in theology, Benjamin and Adorno on the place of immediacy in historical analysis-that stand among the very best that we have. Along the way, Eiland offers profound meditations on the nature of (intellectual) friendship. The book concludes, movingly, with a characterization of Dora Sophie Kellner, Benjamin's former wife; like Adorno and Scholem, she escaped the horrors of Nazism and stayed loyal to Benjamin until the end.

Michael W. Jennings, Class of 1900 Professor of Modern Languages, Emeritus, Princeton University, USA

Intimacy and distance are woven together in Eiland's account of the affinities as well as the tensions that pervaded the friendships of Scholem, Adorno and Benjamin. The epistolary exchanges Eiland masterfully brings together are a testimony to Benjamin's powerful personality as well as a moving account of the devotion his friends showed in securing for him an afterlife in memory.

Eli Friedlander, Laura Schwarz - Kipp Professor of Modern Philosophy, Tel Aviv University, Israel