Stalin's Terror of 1937-8 is one of the most extraordinary events of the twentieth century. His seemingly irrational attack on the military, technical, and political elite on the eve of war, precisely the time when he needed them most, remains difficult to understand. Stalinism and the Politics of Terror provides a new explanation of the political violence of the late 1930s by examining the thinking of Stalin and his allies, and placing it in the broader context of Bolshevik ideas since 1917.
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Priestland tells the epic story of Communism--a movement that has taken root in dozens of countries across 200 years--from its birth after the French Revolution to its ideological maturity in 19th-century Germany to its rise to dominance (and subsequent fall) in the 20th century.

"Well-being for all is not a dream."

In this brilliantly enjoyable rallying-cry of a book, Kropotkin lays out the heart of his anarchist beliefs--beliefs that surged around the world in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and that have a renewed relevance and poignancy today. Humane and thoughtful, but also a devastating critique of how modern society is organized (with the brutal, narrow few clinging onto their wealth and privileges at the expense of the many), The Conquest of Bread is a book to be argued over, again and again.

For more than sixty-five years, Penguin...