Wolfram Eilenberger‘s „Time of the Magicians“ is a portrait of four remarkable philosophers: Ludwig Wittgenstein, Ernst Cassirer, Walter Benjamin and Martin Heidegger. Of course, there are countless books by German authors that could also be considered for TOC, but we chose this philosophical book. It revolves around the emergence of modern thought and follows four men who provided different answers to the challenges of their time, played and continue to play an immensely important role in intellectual history, and occupied very different positions on the political spectrum. Their life stories offer insight into the 1920s, not only laying the foundation for our modern life but also bearing a sometimes unsettling resemblance to our present.