"This extraordinary book . . . is a reminder . . . of the sins of suppression and untruth that have been and can be committed in the name of American journalism . . . One of the last first-person statements from a generation that included Hitler, Nehru, and Mao . . . and Seldes too." --Columbia Journalism Review

Upon its publication, George Seldes's The Great Thoughts instantly took its place as a classic--a treasure house of the seminal ideas that have shaped the intellectual history of the world down through the ages. Seldes, a pivotal figure in the history of American journalism and a tireless researcher, spent the better part of his extraordinary lifetime compiling the thoughts that rule the world, casting his net widely and wisely through the essential works of philosophy, poetry, psychology, economics, politics, memoirs, and letters from the ancient Greeks to the modern Americans....

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

Seldes names the most powerful forces in Europe which organized the Fascist and Nazi parties and movement, the powerful American forces which own, control, and subsidize native Fascism, and the spokesmen, radio orators, writers, and other agents of reaction in America after World War I.