Theodor Adorno was born 100 years ago. He’s “recognized as one of the leading critical minds of the 20th century, a man with an intellectual range that seemingly knew no bounds. He was a musicologist who studied in Vienna with Alban Berg and a composer in his own right, a social theorist steeped in the tradition of western Marxism, and a highly regarded commentator on literature and poetry. Yet Adorno polarized many with his dialectical style and his uncompromising assault on the enlightenment, Hegelian idealism and existentialism.”