One can still read this book profitably today if one sheds the blinders of political correctness. Hermann Kurzke This monumental essay stands like a monolith in the works of Thomas Mann. 'The Reflections of a Non-Political Man' are often interpreted as a conservative pamphlet, a testament to Thomas Mann's reactionary mindset during World War I. In his new edition, Hermann Kurzke achieves a different and exciting interpretation that reintegrates the text into the liberal discourse. Numerous testimonies and sources that Kurzke was able to document during his years of engagement with the 'Reflections' suggest reading the essay as a sometimes passionate, sometimes ironically fractured testament to a permanent self-contradiction. One of Thomas Mann's central works is finally re-explored with this edition.