This new edition of Donald Sassoon's magisterial history of the Left in the twentieth century includes a substantial new introduction by the author. With unique authority and unparalleled scholarship, Sassoon traces the fortunes of the political parties of the left in Western Europe across 14 countries, covering the fortunes of socialism from the rise of the Bolsheviks through two World Wars to the revival of feminism and the arrival of ""green"" politics.

The long-awaited magnum opus of one of Britains most wide-ranging historians

Capitalist enterprise has existed in some form since ancient times, but the globalization and dominance of capitalism as a system began in the 1860s when, in different forms and supported by different political forces, states all over the world developed their modern political frameworks: the unifications of Italy and Germany, the establishment of a republic in France, the elimination of slavery in the American south, the Meiji Restoration in Japan, the emancipation of the serfs in Tsarist Russia. This book...

Revolutions is a sparkling account of political upheaval and the power of history. We think of revolutions as events, like the Fall of the Bastille or the Storming of the Winter Palace. In reality they take decades to burn out, if they ever do. Donald Sassoon engagingly reappraises some of the most celebrated. The English Civil War that killed a king and inaugurated parliamentary rule. The American War of Independence that ejected the British but ignored slavery. The French Revolution that gave us the Rights of Man and years of instability. The national revolutions that unified Italy and...