'This wide-ranging and polemical study unsettles many settled facts of professional historiography and does so with verve and brilliance. Looking back at the age of post-colonialism, post-modernism, post-truth, and many other posts, Benjamin Zachariah uncovers the self-deceptions, anachronisms, and memory lapses that enable historical narratives as well as styles of history-writing. His book is a salutary reminder of the public duty of the historian, and of history's
complicated, but always necessary, relation with evidence and the archive. It should be essential reading.'
Benjamin Zachariah read history at Presidency College, Calcutta, and at Trinity College, Cambridge. His published work includes a biography of Nehru (2004), 'Developing India' (2005/2012), 'Nation Games' (2011/2016/2020), and the co-edited volumes 'The Internationalist Moment' (2015) and 'What's Left of Marxism' (2020/2022). He was Reader at the University of Sheffield before moving to Germany where, among other posts, he was Senior Research Fellow at the University
of Heidelberg, and at the University of Trier. His research interests centre on historiography and historical thinking in public forums, intellectual histories of the twentieth century, international revolutionary networks, and global fascism.