Prismatic Thought : University of Nebraska Press : 9780803273054 : 0803273053 : 01 Jun 1995 : A leading figure in the Frankfurt School of philosophers from the 1930s through the time of his death in 1969, Adorno was the author of influential philosophical and sociological works on issues ranging from aesthetics, music history, and mass culture to politics, modern technology, and the Western philosophical tradition. Prismatic Thought is a brilliant tour of Adorno&;s work, with special emphasis on his aesthetic writings. Peter Uwe Hohendahl opens with a pair of chapters that considers Adorno&;s years of exile in the United States during the Second World War and his return in the early 1950s to a West Germany harrowed by its recent Nazi past and responsibility for the Holocaust. He then examines Adorno&;s writings on literature, language, poetry, philosophy, and mass culture in relation to modern history. Throughout the book, Hohendahl argues that Adorno&;s work "ultimately resists the de