A brilliant new translation of a classic work on violence and revolution as seen through mythology and art

The Ruin of Kasch takes up two subjects--"the first is Talleyrand, and the second is everything else," wrote Italo Calvino when the book first appeared in 1983. Hailed as one of those rare books that persuade us to see our entire civilization in a new light, its guide is the French statesman Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand, who knew the secrets of the ancien regime and all that came after, and was able to adapt the notion of "legitimacy" to the modern...