War and Revolution: l'edizione inglese - aumentata! - del libro sul Revisionismo storico

War and Revolution: Rethinking the Twentieth Century

by Domenico Losurdo Translated by Gregory Elliott

Author of the acclaimed Liberalism: A Counter-History dissects the revisionist attempts to expunge or criminalize revolutions

War and Revolution identifies and takes to task a reactionary trend among contemporary historians, one that’s grown increasingly apparent in recent years. It’s a revisionist tendency discernible in the work of authors such as Ernst Nolte, who traces the impetus behind the Holocaust to the excesses of the Russian Revolution; or François Furet, who links the Stalinist purges to an “illness” originating with the French Revolution.

The intention of these revisionists is to eradicate the revolutionary tradition. Their true motives have little to do with the quest for a greater understanding of the past, but lie in the climate of the present day and the ideological needs of the political classes, as is most clearly seen now in the work of the Anglophone imperial revivalists Paul Johnson and Niall Ferguson.

In this vigorous riposte to those who would denigrate the history of emancipatory struggle, Losurdo captivates the reader with a tour de force account of modern revolt, providing a new perspective on the English, American, French and twentieth-century revolutions.

Hardback, 368 pagesISBN: 9781781686164  30 December 2014 £16.99
Ebook ISBN: 9781781686171 3 February 2015 £16.99

Forthcoming

Reviews

• “A brilliant exercise in unmasking liberal pretensions, surveying over three centuries with magisterial command of the sources.”
  – Financial Times (in priase of Liberalism: A Counter-History)
• “Stimulatingly uncovers the contradictions of an ideology that is much too self-righteously invoked.”
  – Pankaj Mishra (in priase of Liberalism: A Counter-History), Guardian
• “A book of wide reference and real erudition.”
  – Times Literary Supplement (in priase of Liberalism: A Counter-History)
• “The book is a historically grounded, very accessible critique of liberalism, complementing a growing literature critical of liberalism.”
  – Choice (in priase of Liberalism: A Counter-History)