Reflections on a Ravaged Century Book + PRICE WATCH * Amazon pricing is not included in price watch

Reflections on a Ravaged Century Book

How can humankind avoid another century like the 20th? Blind devotion to obscene ideologies--Communism, Nazism--made the final hundred years of the millennium the bloodiest in human history. As Robert Conquest, author of Reflections on a Ravaged Century, notes, "Over this century the human race has survived experiences that, to put it mildly, should have been instructive. Scores of millions have been slaughtered, and it cannot be said that the avoidance of the even worse catastrophe of nuclear war was foreordained." Might it happen again? As Conquest is the author of The Great Terror, a devastating account of Stalin's crimes (and widely regarded as one of the 20th century's most important and influential works of history), any reflections he may have are worth noting. He's clearly worried, quoting, for example, the astonishing statement by Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm in 1994 that the construction of a Communist utopia can justify the murder of 20 million people. Reflections on a Ravaged Century is primarily focused on the rise and fall of the Soviet Union, but he remains consistently forward-looking. "The power of fanaticism and of misunderstanding is by no means extinct," warns Conquest. The 20th century will be a prelude to even greater evils unless intellectuals engage in "a careful consideration of what needs to be learned, and unlearned." This book, both wise and accessible, is a good start. --John J. MillerRead More

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  • Product Description

    In the philosophical tradition of George Orwell and Isaiah Berlin, Robert Conquest presents a brilliant work of history and meditation, one that examines the political ideologies that have corrupted the twentieth century and, in the process, sent millions to the slaughterhouse. The main responsibility for our century's cataclysms, Conquest maintains, lies not in impersonal economic or social forces--like revolutionary Marxism or German National Socialism--but in the distortions that polluted human minds with the detritus of absolutist ideas. Conquest finds the failure to understand these phenomena as epidemic in Western civic culture, which has so far--barely--prevailed. Whether discussing Kierkegaard or Koestler or the disasters posed by the new European Economic Union, Conquest has a remarkable ability to fuse literature and history, philosophy and prognostication, and presents here a grand synthesis of our century, seen through its most deeply flawed ideologies.

  • 0393048187
  • 9780393048186
  • Robert Conquest
  • 1 November 1999
  • WW Norton & Co
  • Hardcover (Book)
  • 317
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