Walter Benjamin's writings on the concept of history, which he worked on until the spring of 1940, are both a sober account of a passionate intellectual and a steep construction of a cool theorist. The intellectual provides an account of the state of the venerable endeavor to transform the world into a more humane place—especially at a time when the forces that had previously been trusted to do so are disintegrating and hopes are shattered. The theorist seizes this opportunity to uncover the devastating consequences of the existing philosophy of history and to devise an alternative that no longer leaves the critique of linear progress solely to irrationalism. This critique has lost none of its relevance to this day, just as the derived insight that catastrophe is not the only outcome has not.