Star ratings are so weird, because it feels like I'm judging "how good is it?" but Goodreads defines the stars as "how much did you like it?" This book, and many others, is a great execution of a worthwhile project, but I didn't hugely enjoy reading it. It's often very abstract stuff. As the subtitle says, it is the "Life and Works" of Marx, and much of that guy's life was about his writing and ideas, so there is discussion about his personal life and such, but a LOT of this is discussion of what he believed and wrote and argued and how other people responded at the time or since. It can be kind of a slog at times, but it's nobody's fault, and this book does well what it's supposed to.