Published 1933, at a time of widespread unemployment and bank failures, Towards the Understanding of Karl Marx: A Revolutionary Interpretation, by the young Sidney Hook (1902-1989), received considerable critical acclaim and reinforced his burgeoning reputation as a brilliant expositor of ideas. By "revolutionary interpretation" Hook meant quite literally that Marx's main objective was to stimulate revolutionary opposition to class society.<BR>Hook later abandoned the rationale for many of the revolutionary views expressed in this volume, but he never abandoned his warm, positive views of Marx as a thinker and a fighter for freedom. He eventually concluded that twentieth-century history had proved both him and Marx wrong about the inevitable necessity of revolutionary means to achieve their mutual social goals.<BR>This unrevised but expanded edition makes readily available for scholars an influential work long out of print and provides critical insight into the intellectual development of one of the twentieth-century's great thinkers. It includes introductions by Ernest B. Hook and Christopher Phelps on the background and reception of the original publication, essays on aspects of Hook's work and life by Paul Berman and Lewis S. Feuer, and an unusual work by Sidney Hook himself on his eventual views of what was enduring in Marx's political outlook.