The pursuit of truth, it seems, depends much on how one defines truth.

After the art historian Sir Anthony Blunt was finally outed as a Soviet spy, George Steiner wrote a famous essay called 'The Cleric if Treason', wondering how one devoted to the fanatically minute truths of verifying the authenticity of great art could also lie, steal and betray on a massive scale for decades.

There's something of that same question hovering over this review of one of the last century's great collectors of books on Judaism and Marxism: what was it about Das Kapital and its progeny's ability to lead smart people down the primrose path for so long, and so unquestioningly?

http://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-man-20000-books-14680?page=show