The Haunted Present traces four postwar thinkers and the competing philosophies that shaped society, culture, science and today's crises

Wolfram Eilenberger's The Haunted Present follows Theodor Adorno, Susan Sontag, Michel Foucault and Paul Feyerabend from the aftermath of the Second World War through the intellectual upheavals of the following decades. Moving across cities including Frankfurt, San Francisco, Paris and Vienna, the book presents four thinkers confronting a world that demanded reconstruction and new ways of understanding society, culture and science. Their lives and ideas illuminate the collision of critical theory, aesthetic rebellion, scientific scepticism and political disillusionment that shaped the period. Eilenberger argues that these competing intellectual impulses produced faultlines and crises that still haunt the present, while also suggesting that philosophy can exceed its inherited constraints. The hardback is listed at 480 pages and is scheduled for release on 26 January 2027.