The World That Never Was: A True Story of Dreamers, Schemers, Anarchists and Secret Agents by Alex Butterworth (3-Mar-2011) Paperback

by Alex Butterworth

The last third of the nineteenth century saw the world in flux. Science vied with religion to represent the soul of man, and technological advances opened the possibility of new ways of living. Yet as the world sank into a long depression, untrammelled capitalism continued to stretch the gulf between rich and poor. From Russia to America, across Western Europe and beyond, governments already unsettled by major shifts in geopolitical power were threatened by growing social unrest and the rise of socialism. And looming over them was the spectre of the Anarchist and the shadow of international terrorism.A Tsar and an Empress, Presidents and plutocrats were all vulnerable to the assassin's bombs and bullets, but so too was bourgeois society in its cafes and opera houses. It was a new kind of Terror that could strike anywhere and that permeated deep into the imagination of the times. Its true weapon, though, was not dynamite but fear a fact quickly grasped by those whose job it was to protect the powerful. Yet in a credulous age, when hoaxers and forgers thrived, the fictions spun by police chiefs and their agent provocateurs were often no less beguiling. And out of the short-term actions of these forgotten individuals grew the noxious delusions of worldwide conspiracy that would poison the century to come.A masterly exploration of the strange twists and turns of history, The World That Never Was follows the interweaving lives of several key anarchists, and of the secret police who tracked them. Framed by the Paris Commune of 1871 and the 1905 revolution in St Petersburg, and spread across five continents, theirs is the story of a generation that saw the dream of Utopia crumble, to be replaced by a dangerous desperation. Here is a revelatory portrait of an era with uncanny echoes of our own.From the Hardcover edition.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Politics, Philosophy, Terrorism, Espionage, 19th Century

Paperback

First published June 15, 2010

Reviews

[Tim · Rating 2 out of 5]

Giving up on this one after slogging through a little over half of it. Might come back to it at some point but it's been frustrating me for so long now that I feel I have to move onto something else or I'll go mad.

It's a shame, really, since I feel like it fills a niche in the literature on anarchist history that confoundingly has never quite been filled. This is the only book I know of to focus specifically on 19th century anarchist terrorism. On top of that, it manages to tell the story of the terrorists themselves alongside the story of their pursuers in the various national intelligence agencies and secret police forces. This interweaving two-part structure is especially valuable for this topic, as it gives clear insight into how the movement was manipulated by the governments it opposed, undercover agents pushing the movement further and further toward violence which could then be used to justify even more violent repression.

Also interesting is the fact that Butterworth is an outsider to the ideology he's discussing (another rarity in anarchist lit being intelligent and evenhanded appraisals of the movement by non-anarchists). Because of that, he's able to cut straight through the thick cloud of sanctity and fawning reverence with which too many anarchist texts shroud their pantheon of saints and martyrs. Some of the portraits he paints are refreshingly critical. Malatesta, for instance, is depicted as somewhat of a bumbling revolutionary wannabe with a comically unshakable optimism and an "unblemished record of failed insurrections." Likewise, Bakunin at the tail end of his life is described as a "corrupt husk," burning through a young acolyte's inheritance in order to refurbish his estate. The credulous Malatesta only leaves the old man, writes Butterworth, after the "belated realization that hiring picturesque milkmaids and excavating an artifical lake was not wholly essential to the creation of a revolutionary headquarters". Kropotkin (along with Communard exiles Elisee Reclus and Louise Michel) is given probably the most sympathetic treatment. That's not to say Butterworth isn't sympathetic in general. One gets the sense he agrees with the goals of the anarchists but abhors their violent methods (which, he convincingly demonstrates, ultimately led to their downfall).

None of the positive features of this book can make up for its deficiencies, though. For one, Butterworth's accuracy is highly suspect. He freely admits that a paucity of records on certain figures and events has led him to do a little bit of papering over the gaps in his narrative. But some inaccuracies, such as the bewildering mistake of conflating Bakunin's "The Revolutionary Catechism" with Nechayev's "Catechism of a Revolutionary," can only be explained by sheer laziness and poor research skills. Written 4 years apart, the former is an anarchist manifesto, the latter a highly authoritarian manual for the formation of secret societies. Though Bakunin may have had input in Nechayev's text (the two had a tempestuous relationship), and despite the fact that it was reprinted in anarchist periodicals, its strong emphasis on hierarchy was in direct opposition to everything Bakunin stood for, and for Butterworth to think for an instant that it was a true collaboration between the two revolutionaries is enough to make me severely question everything else he has to say in the book. Oh and to top it off, the companion website where Butterworth claims his footnotes are located doesn't actually exist!

There's also the problem of the book's scope and complexity. Though placing the events in a general historical context is appreciated, Butterworth does a horrible job deciding which details to include, often selecting things because they're bizarre or funny rather than essential to plot or analysis. The title and cover of the book goes a long way in describing its tone - constantly invoking an atmosphere of a STRANGE AND OTHERWORLDLY TIME, even when completely inappropriate to do so. As you can imagine, it gets old fast. Far too much time is spent discussing the failed French Commune and a few other political situations, and the cast of characters is simply too large. Many of them could have avoided mention entirely. And why on earth is Henri Rochefort, who has only a tangential relationship with anarchism, a major character whose life is followed closely throughout? At times it seems as if Butterworth began writing a book about the fallout of the Paris Commune, only later decided to focus more concretely on anarchism, and then just left in all the superfluous chapters. The book probably would have benefited too from more photographs of the people involved (would have helped keep them straight in my head) and perhaps a timeline. It's simply too much info to keep track of.

The biggest issue is far simpler though: Butterworth is a bad writer. To be more specific, he's a pretentious, ostentatious writer. Others say it better than I can so I'll just quote them. One Amazon reviewer points out his "constant use of ten dollar words when fifty cent ones will do" - BINGO! Another writes, "the book clanks with long, convoluted, compound sentences that require more than one reading in many cases, but fails to provide the reader with a motivation to read them more than once" - BINGO AGAIN! I'm willing to bet Butterworth has read George Orwell's "Homage to Catalonia" but what he probably should have been reading was George Orwell's "Politics and the English Language"!!

[Justin Evans · Rating 3 out of 5]

Butterworth chose a great time for this work (roughly, Kropotkin's active years), and there's a fabulous story to be told about it, but this book isn't quite it. On the upside, his research is mind-boggling, and my life is substantially richer now that I know about the fabulous Gabriel Jogan-Pages, aka Leo Taxil, who, e.g., managed to convince the military governor of Marseilles to hunt down an imaginary school of killer sharks, and convinced much of the world that the Freemasons worshiped devils and sacrificed human beings. The general thrust of the book is to show how many wonderful characters emerged from the 1871 Commune, or from interactions with communards on the one hand, and, on the other, how anti-terrorist bodies fairly quickly turned into terrorist bodies all in the interests of catching terrorists. That's all reasonable.

Unfortunately, there are far too many kettles on the stove-top; Butterworth, like many non-professional historians, is more concerned with cramming more stuff in than selecting the most relevant bits and pieces, and, still worse, his prose style is very, very, very poorly suited to a story involving dozens of people flung across the globe. It's entirely up to the reader to work out which events were the important ones, which sounds wonderful, but is actually like trying to choose a good meal from a menu on which there's only names and no description of the food. It's just impossible.

Five stars for the choice of topic and the asides and digressions; two stars for the execution. Well worth reading, though you might need to skim sections. Or even whole chapters.*

*: please, please, please, historians, give your chapters real names so your reader knows what the topic is before they get half way through. No more clever quotes as chapter titles, I beg you.

[Sofie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Masterproef lectuur 🤧 would not recommend

[Mel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was a monumental undertaking. It can be hard to follow. There seem to be almost as many characters as in War and Peace. I mean it covers everyone from Marx to Kropotkin to Michel and then throws in Wyatt Earp and Jack the Ripper for good measure. But it is a very well researched look at the political and historical context in which anarchism formed. I'm amazed by how we are still dealing with the same inner conflicts and difficult personalities. Definitely recommended. Tho you will have an easier time getting through it if you already have a bit of background on the players.

[Raven · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you are looking for an easy "beach" read this is not the book for you. A lot of the people in this book, I had never heard of before. Reading their stories was enjoyable. I liked it

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

A book about anarchism," this ought to be interesting," I thought when I picked up this book. Now that I have finished it,I must admit i was right but it is only because of my determination and discipline that I am able to say so. A large part of this book is a highly discriptive book, it introduces at least 40 different persons who were somehow connected to anarchism or the police/ secret agents fighting against anarchism in the late 19th and early 20th century. But do not think these are short descriptions explaining how they got involved or what their significance was, no! Prepare for detailed descriptions of their lives to the least interesting details. Now if this were limited to the mayor persons such as Bakunin, Kropotkin, Louise Michel, Rachkovsky and perhaps some lesser important figueres such as: Malatesta, Rochefort, General Boulanger, Reclus and the leaders of the people's will movement, this would have been acceptable. The author however chose to explore the motivations and doubts of every person of interest no matter how insignificant and as stated before also lots of insignificant details on the main persons lives. Because of this and the chaotic structure, it was often hard to get the essence of the situation and I ended up skipping large sections of biographic details, wich is a shame words are ment to be read.

So far for the bad part. (spoiler Alert)

The good part does make up for the bad part on an academic level.
The author makes some very interesting claims on the origin of anarchism and it's rivalery with marxism. He does not stop with the well known ideological conflict(wich became a personal feud after some time) between Marx and Bakunin but also highlighted that persons as Kropotkin and Louise michel had their own reasons to distrust marxism and state socialism and did not merely copy Bakunin.
Second interesting point is the memory of the french commune. It is well known that the french commune used a red flag as it's symbol used by all participants and revolutionaries at the time and both anarchists and socialists/communists referred to the event as a significant point in history. How they judged it however, it seems, is strikinly different. Marxists used it as a proof that a localised revolution that tries to reform itself locally, no matter how progressive, is a doomed attempt. They used it as an argument that first the entire nation or even world has to be swept up in the tide of revolutionary spirit before reformations should happen. anarchists however did not agree, they saw it as a failed attempt yes, but remembered the hope it gave the world. They believed not in a centralised expanding wave of revolution but the necessity of a decentralised revolt. If workers had formed communes all over france then things would have been different they claimed.
Third linked to this last point marxists continued to use the red flag of revolution anarhists turned to black. The reason for this change according to the author is because of Louise Michel, a somewhat forgotten anarchist ideology foundster. Louise was one of the few surviving voices of the commune and after a prison time in the french pacific came back to spread the ideals of anarchism. Every year she would hold a wake at the last battle ground of the commune so as no-one could forget the lost dream and to signifie her mourning she used black flags.
This brings us to point 4 according to the author of this book anarchists also share a deep connection to a romanticesed past of human society be it native americans, russsion mirs, medival towns and communities. Anarchist want to return to a lost world or at least its ideals and conduct, modern technology is welcome as long it gives leisure and utility, again this explains the use of the black flag of mourning.
Point 5 finally the last mayor claim made by the author is that the CIA and the KGB based their working methods and attitude on the Russian Tsarist cross-borders counter-intelligence organisation, the okhrana, founded and organised by the infamous Rachovsky. Bribes, spies, murder, blackmail, intimidation, terrorism, arson there was no limit for this organisation in its quest to crush anarchism( an obsession fueled by the assasination of tsar Alexander the second). This man Rachovsky was responsible for creating an european and American fear of anarchism. There is also a tragic irony in this story for the anarchists actions and mere existence were used as excuse to enforce stricter laws and police methods to control the populations, the same populations anarchists wanted to liberate. The author at the same time makes a subtle link with an issue in the contemporary west: the idea that to protect the population it is acceptable to take away the freedoms you claim to protect.

Actually I would have liked to have given two scores: a literary score of 2 stars and an academic one of 4 stars. Not that it was a nightmare to read but it wasn't a walk in the park either. So it is worthwhile to read this but only if you want to know more about anarchism, counter-intelligence and the years between 1870 and 1922. If you do want to know more about these matters, then by all means get yourself a copy.

[Neil Powell · Rating 4 out of 5]

An enthralling, complicated, intriguing, confusing and ultimately rewarding read. The shear volume of information, characters, espionage and idealistic rhetoric were at times mind blowing, and I'll admit that 150 pages in I was struggling to cope. But I'm very glad I persevered, as it was well worth finishing. At times, the plot twists and turns like a fictional spy thriller: you'd think it hard to believe that characters Peter Rachkovsky, Errico Malatesta, Louise Michel and Peter Kropotkin were real people, so incredible is the myriad of interwoven stories they inhabit.

There are very obvious parallels of the anarchist movement from the late 19th century with the modern day terrorism, so many in fact that it was almost as if history was repeating itself. Today's western governments would do well to heed the lessons from the Anarchists revolution

[Marc Nash · Rating 3 out of 5]

A great depth of research on show in a kind of who's who of European anarchism between the Paris Commune and the outbreak of the First World War but somehow an opportunity missed. For a start ending at the War means there is no mention of anarchist collectives in Free Territory Ukraine during the Russian Revolutionary upheaval, but those ideas must have been fermenting, they didn't magically appear in 1917, yet there is no treatment of them at all. Nor do Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, key figures in US anarchism, get much column inches here. The Who's Who element made it more about personalities than politics, which is partly valid since it was hard to distinguish true anarchist from police agent and agent provocateur. But then that aspect is treated far more authentically in the work of fiction that is GK Chesterton's "The Man Who Was Thursday". There are good sections of the book, particularly the opening setting of the Paris Commune in which Butterworth demonstrates a keen historian's ability to bring a past event alive. The Commune is a period well documented and covered by many historians, so I feel he fares less well when he delves into the murky and poorly illuminated world of individual activists. His small picture is very small indeed. Never did I get a sense of just how widespread, influential and current anarchism was throughout Europe in the last decades of the nineteenth and the early years of the twentieth centuries.

[Kate K. F. · Rating 1 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book. I was hoping to find it a look into the complex lives and thoughts of people trying to change the world in the 19th century. Instead I found it dense, boring and incredibly hard to follow. I made it through a couple of early chapters before putting it down and never picking it up again.

The author's introduction made me hopeful that the story would be one that hadn't been told before and that would be full of rich stories from the primary sources. Their enthusiasm was clear and their dedication to finding the true sources as well as how much they cared about the era. It was also the best written part of the book as it was funny, quick moving and said a lot in a little bit of space. Yet the book promised in the introduction didn't appear, I found a book with too many characters, no clear thought line and that seemed far too proud of its research without understanding how to create a narrative. I hope someone else will take this research and write the book that these historical figures deserve.

[Eric · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you can get past some of the overburdened language and the massive cast of characters, this is a great book for tying together the personalities and sects of the radical left after fall of the Paris commune to the rise of Soviet communism. From Russian nihilists, French, Spanish, American and German anarchists, socialists and communists as well as the state organizations and personalities that tracked, tricked and, when it played to their advantage, egged them on. This is one of those books that could have benefited from a more ruthless editor, along with some extra-textual help (maps, timelines, maybe political family trees). Still, worth the read.

[Vellichor · Rating 2 out of 5]

A fascinating era rendered almost incomprehensible by spectacularly clumsy writing: dud sentences, intrusive verbosity, meandering narrative, premature generalisations and an unnecessarily dense and revolving cast of characters. The problem here is that there is no structure to this narrative apart from a chronological one. Characters are introduced by way of vague descriptions then vanish again only to re-emerge later on without warning in a fashion that is bewildering and vexatious to the reader. In some passages Butterworth seems to be tossing a coin with his readers until some kind of point emerges, beating them over the head with long rambling quotations and inane trivia. It’s the pursuit of anecdote and zaniness over historical inquiry.

Much of this book is incoherent and infuriating. I found it difficult to make headway because I had to reread sentences constantly to make sense of them. This is compounded by Butterworth’s criminal habit of beginning sentences with conjunctions ‘and’ ,‘with’ or ‘but’ and other hack journalistic devices. In addition, the narrative mostly is a blow by blow (and nonetheless vague) account of all known movements and statements of the various figures interspersed with unsourced musings and conjectures by Butterworth. Instead of rigor there is tedious rigmarole as figures merge in and out of eachother because Butterworth doesn’t devote any energy to clearly delineating their personalities or political philosophies.

Some might argue that Butterworth has a high degree of fluency in all his references but to me it was just a slow-rolling chaos. Every now and again there are some fascinating bits of information. Calvin had banned jewellery in Geneva which had led to the emergence of the clock industry, the absinthe craze was caused by a lack of wine due to phylloxera. Russia transferred its national debt from Germany to France in the 1880s. These intersections of society and economics only reinforce the sense that Butterworth is squandering the opportunity that a more assiduous historian would make use of.

I really love history books but at times I had to remind myself that Kropotkin and Kravchinsky were different people with different aims and methods, a singular achievement by Butterworth who is not invested in relieving the confusion arising from his lazy, overcooked and unfocused narrative. Vera Figner, Louise Michel, Vera Zasulich are almost interchangeable in Butterworth’s rendering as one omnipresent shrill, humourless revolutionary harridan. Butterworth is also flippant and crass when he wants to inject something into his moribund narrative, for instance Louise Michel is described as having “a bullet still rattling around her skull” in relation to a failed assassination attempt.

[Falynn - the TyGrammarSaurus Rex · Rating 1 out of 5]

Very rarely do I give up on a book. However, having taken two months to battle through 14 of this book's 25 chapters, I have reached the end of my endurance.
I really wanted to like it. The premise behind it is fantastic; tales of the anarchists of 19th century Europe from an impartial perspective. But it tries too hard to cover too much ground.
There are nuggets of gold in here, but they are compressed down to a mere line or two, massively out weighed by pages and pages of names and people's travel itineraries.
I would have loved to learn more about the Paris Commune for example. Crammed into a chapter, it can barely breathe and would be worth a whole book of its own (or two or three!).
Likewise with many other elements and "main characters". Whilst I appreciate the need for an overview to tie the different movements and personalities together, this wasn't that book. There is too much detail (but not enough on any one topic to satisfy) and insufficient oversight and control of the topic to be a useful summation.
5 out of 5 for the idea, but sadly 1 out of 5 for the execution.

[Heather Jones · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is so thoroughly researched that I think it'll probably be an invaluable resource for someone with the right kind of interest in and prior knowledge of the subject.

For me, though, it didn't work. I emerged at the other end of this long, dense work not much wiser than I was when I began it, with a lot of names and events, but very little sense of contexts and reasons. I think the author was assuming a LOT more prior knowledge than I actually had, and prioritizing getting every detail in over looking at the broader picture that was needed to put the details in context for a reader.

Maybe the problem was that I'm not the target audience? But maybe I should have been - I don't have any prior knowledge, but I was curious and eager to learn, and I feel disappointed that I didn't learn as much as I was curious about.

I probably would have given up on it, but it's March 2020, and I'm sitting at home waiting out the coronavirus, so I have lots of free time and not much else.

[Brendan De Baets · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had to struggle through this one. A very interesting theme, although not so wel written. Stuffed with overly complex sentences and too much names without any sort of guide or summary of the most important figures. Prepare for a lot of name-dropping, minor facts and a lot of sentences to re-read. It's a maze in which you need to find the message. However, in the end I learnt quite a bit from the book, learning a lot of how the appeal of one of the most utopic ideologies diminished to almost nothing.

[Donald · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was very disappointed not to like this more than I did. It is a very interesting subject and the way the author covers the twisted relationship between anarchism itself and the demonisation of anarchism by the authorities should have been fascinating. But sheer bulk of incident and detail and characters, more and more of them, and something about the style that I find other reviewers describing more eloquently than I could left me feeling adrift, unable to follow everything and I ended up skimming too much. A shame.

[Chris · Rating 2 out of 5]

A long and very detailed read, on reflection probably not worth the time invested though.

The writing style is quite academic and just not very enjoyable. Must have taken a huge amount of research but the end result is just to be swamped with detail upon detail There was (is) a great story waiting to escape the mire.

Was also very surprised to see no mention whatsoever of Rudolph Rocker who to my understanding was an integral figure in the early 1900s.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good overview of European radical history in late 19th C Europe, intertwined with tales of the police and spies who tried to stop them.

[Rudy van der Hoeven · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed it tremendously Easy read because one can read each chapter on its own
More fun when you have Google ready to get more details

[Clint · Rating 3 out of 5]

Far more accessible than many of the reviews here would lead you to believe.

[Mickey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wow - it took a year and not a half but I finished it. Like reading a 450 page version of Deuteronomy. Alex Butterworth definitely needs a cowriter or a better editor. With six-syllable name following six-syllable name it's harder to follow than an Old Testament genealogy. And with an interplay of characters like Seliverstoff, Savinkov, Sergeyev (who was actually a Russian mole with the real name of Aleksander Evalenko), and Stepniak (a successful assassin who fought in Turkey and Italy before founding the Society of Friends of the Russian Press under the name of Sergei Kravchinsky), the sixteen page list of "Dramatis Personae" gets dog-eared pretty quickly. The text reads a little too much like a 28 year old'dissertation where the writer's afraid to throw away any detail - and so he doesn't.

So, why did I stick to it for two years? Because a lot of the details were fascinating and enlightening. By the end, the concept that an archduke's assassination could be blamed for causing a world war fell into that hole of simple explanations we use to avoid the bigger causes - such as ill-thought out mutual defense pacts and simmering class and nationalist conflicts over a half century. The outbreak of Bolshevik Communism in Russia, kicking its way through a relatively pacifist Socialist movement mostly based in London, France, and Switzerland.

There were also episodes of history I knew nothing about, like a genocidal breakup of the Paris Commune not long after the American Civil War, a country many of the Communards based their ideas of Utopia upon. I was reading a chapter on the development of weaponry available to the common man expanding a concept of "propaganda by deed" to "propaganda by dynamite" about the time the recent Paris shootings occurred. The parallels were striking. In the 1870s and 80s individuals and groups were instigating shootings and explosions at numerous Paris locales. As now, reactionary politicians used the events (and his later documents show, instigated some) to evoke public fears and gain a partisan advantage.

Beyond the lesser known names among the characters are the authors and philosophers of the period. My favorite discovery was how many of Jules Vernes writings were built around early socialists exiled to remote South Pacific islands. Captain Nemo is modeled after a Polish commander who died defending Paris against the allied German and French Versailles troops.

So now that I'm finished, what's next? I've already started reading Vernes' 200,000 Leagues and want to reread Mysterious Island two. Then, if I can talk myself out of another year, maybe hit this one again.

[Beorn · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book attempts to tell the story of the inner machinations of the late 19th/early 20th century murky world of anarchists like Peter Kropotkin, Alexander Berkman, Emma Goldman etc, through using the approach more common to that used by a novelist to tell a story.

Initially this is innovative enough a design to make the read worthwhile but soon enough it soon becomes frustrating, partly because of the inaccessibility of the text and partly because of the annoying way in which it's printed. Page after page of tiny text crammed tightly into every page with very little if any paragraph breaks. Add on top of that the fact the writer automatically makes the presumption that the reader is fully aware of who the individual 'characters' are and their histories.

Overall this reads far more like a novel take on an in-depth politics textbook rather than an immersive, accessible historical book. It's far more suited to the kind of people who are either studying politics in education or work in the sector professionally. Anyone with a grass-roots interest in the movement will often flounder trying to digest this book.

The best way I can analogise it is if you were to imagine you made yourself a great meal, all cooked by yourself that you for no apparent reason tried to eat all at once and couldn't swallow.

It says a lot about a book when, even after repeated attempts at engaging yourself with it, you still find yourself with an uphill struggle.

Disappointing, impenetrable wall of dirge.

A 2 out of 5 is possibly a little harsh but this is based far more on the experience of reading the book than a mark of it's validity, the information it contains or such like.

[Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an impressive book that anyone interested in anarchist history would find a worthwhile read.

As others have noted, one of the biggest problems is that it is a huge story involving hundreds of individuals, making it very difficult to keep track of things. The book could certainly have benefited from a glossary of individuals, allowing for easy reference when an unfamiliar name comes up. Along with the myriad of individuals, the book jumps around a lot, making it hard to follow. Finally, while I can understand Butterworth's choice in not including footnotes, I feel that many of his claims really require footnotes in order to be taken seriously. There are many instances where I felt dubious about what I was reading and was unsure if it was substantiated fact, speculation or editorializing.

This book almost only deals with European history - which clearly offers more than enough ground to cover, yet I was disappointed groups like the IWW or Magonistas got no mention at all when they clearly played a role in the international anarchist movement at that time. Though Butterworth has empathy towards some of his subjects and towards anarchism in general, I did feel at times that some subjects got an unfair shake or were too easily dismissed by the author.

All that said, the book is an impressive attempt to reconstruct a history of anarchism in Europe and worth checking out.

[Holly Cruise · Rating 3 out of 5]

The grandiose, almost filmic, quality of the book's title is a clue to its style. The history of the anarchists is presented as an adventure, crisscrossing Europe and America, with the dreamers and their governmental nemeses striking out at each other. There are some great stories in here, and Butterworth manages to make the parallels drawn with today's political situations come across as considered rather than trite, a lightness of touch which serves the book well.

There is a big cast of names, the book starts with a glossary of people, but I didn't have any trouble keeping track of who was was. Whether this is purely down to the evocative writing, or whether I just watch too many TV shows with huge casts, isn't completely certain, but I think Butterworth's writing does a good job of according importance and individuality to each person of significance.

It never got boring, even if the anarchists did seem very prone to repeating their actions and mistakes. They wouldn't appreciate the comparison but they really did at times hold up perfect examples of Marx's old tragedy/farce view of history.

As with any good history book, it left me wanting to find out more about some of those talked of, and the insight (albeit too brief) into the impact these people had on WWI is timely.

[Jason Reeser · Rating 4 out of 5]

I must admit this book was not particularly well written, but I'll have to explain. The text is very thick, and the author doesn't do much to make it easy to get through. There are so many different names/characters and historical incidences tossed around that it was difficult to follow. I get the feeling I was supposed to have taken a class in 20th century European history before reading this.
However, and that's a big however, I gave this book 4 stars, and for good reason. The book, as a whole, is marvelous. What a fascinating story. This little bit of history is not a collection of anecdotal trivia. It is the driving force that leads to everything that happens in the 21st century. This challenging of governments and religion eventually leads to the death of a Tsar, an American President, and World Wars I and II, not to mention the Russian Revolution and the Cold War. These seemingly inept anarchists started a destablization of society that we are still paying for today. It is tragic, yet at the same time, rather impressive. I reccomend the book only if you can wade through the thicker, less exciting points, in order to understand the big picture.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Before starting my review let me say that my shelves for this book are pretty poor, but without creating new shelves (and I have way too many already) they are the best I can do.

A brilliant book both historically but also as a splendid warning for all those who are flying into paranoia over our latest scare over terrorists (I'll be honest I find the reactions of so many Americans particularly annoying as I can remember when they were actively funding the IRA bombs in London) because almost always the danger is exaggerated - and this book shows how overly demented those fears were at the end of the 19th century and early 20th century and how wrong most of the steps the police services around the world took were (never mind the many real terrorists various police services actually, if unknowingly, employed). You can be sure that the same is true now.

Lots of reviewers have found this book heavy going - I am surprised - I found it delightful and funny - how can you resist tales of the Frenchman who conned the Vatican with ridiculous tales about Masons and Satanists - I won't spoil it - read the book.

[Susan Beetlestone · Rating 4 out of 5]

Okay, this book was hard work, with a vast cast of characters to remember, and it did help to have some knowledge of the subject already, but I found it very rewarding. My knowledge of the Paris Commune was greatly extended, and though I knew something already about the Russian and British anarchists and the activities of the Okhrana, I learned a great deal more from this book. There were so many stories that were almost too ridiculous to be true, but they were true. The whole is a story of opportunities for social progress lost or hijacked by entirely the wrong people.
Not a book for someone who knows nothing much about the period, but a good one for extending and filling out your perhaps sketchy knowledge.

[The American Conservative]

'Alex Butterworth claims that his book examines various revolutionaries and radicals in the period between the Paris Commune of 1871 and the Russian Revolution of 1905, all with the purpose of showing how they were so very like the terrorists of today. It is based on his feeling, looking back on the 19th century, “that the intervening century has somehow folded back upon itself” and that the “secret clockwork of intrigue and manipulation to protect the status quo” that operated back then is like the one operating today.

Once stated in the introduction, however, that connection is never studied, never proved.'

Read the full review, "Are Anarchists Revolting?" on our website:
http://www.theamericanconservative.co...

[Stephanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting book - my first on the history of the anarchist movement. The story is full of really interesting characters that I had never heard of (but after I had read about them, I felt that I should have.) The author is very good at navigating through anarchist theory, contextualizing it within socialist/communist thought in the 19th Century and why this was important to history. My main complaint is that there are just simply too many characters to keep track of. A "dramatis personae" would have GREATLY helped to navigate the lengthy book.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

While it's definitely an interesting book, overall it never quite seems to come together for me. It seems to assume a greater familiarity with events from the period than I have, and casts its net so wide in terms of players and events, that the throughline of the book never becomes especially clear. The connections are all there, but for me they were swamped in so many other details it was difficult to keep up.

[Bill Murphy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was frustrating and fascinating in equal measures. A very well researched tale of a turbulent time with a huge array of different protagonists. However for many sections of the book it was just too much of a slog, getting bogged down in a bit too much detail. If you have a historical interest in this era then it's an informative read, but otherwise be prepared to struggle through it.