This book proposes to interpret Heidegger by reconstructing the philosophical panorama of the early twentieth century and the one between the two World Wars. In the foreground of such a panorama, the two Heideggerian mountains of Sein und Zeit (Being and Time; 1927) and the work that followed the change of direction (Kehre) of his thought in the 1930s and 1940s stand out. Andrew Barash's reconstruction establishes subterranean continuities between Heidegger's work and his intellectual environment and exploits their contrast to make the work more intelligible. In order to appreciate the consequences of continuity and lack of continuity, Barash posed the enduring fundamental question of historical meaning and summoned all the protagonists of an intellectual debate that dates back nearly a hundred years, including Heidegger himself, to deal with it. When he speaks of historical meaning, he is referring to the stubborn question addressed more closely by the term "coherence" applied to history. Almost from the beginning, he returns again and again to this key term and the fundamental question to which it points.