How the West Lost the Peace

Philipp Ther joins sound wisdom to his formidable talents as a historian in this study of Europe's alarming drift towards populism. He knows that we cannot understand politics without serious attention to economics, he understands Europe as extending from Ireland to the Pacific and beyond, and he writes beautifully. His urgently needed book is a pleasure to read, and if its subjects are often grim, the lessons Ther draws illuminate a way forward. John Connelly, University of California, Berkeley Philipp Ther has written a sad but clear-eyed tribute to the ethics of Karl Polanyi's The Great Transformation. His analysis of the social divisions that preceded political polarization and the spurious link between capitalism and democracy exposes the global fiasco of the West's neoliberal triumphalism. Maria Todorova, University of Illinois