Review
"Mr. Berman is a wonderfully lucid presenter and analyser of recent intellectual history, and his distinctive virtue is his cool voice" - New York Times "The best book I have read on Muslim fundamentalism and what to do about it." - Daily Telegraph"
Book Description
This timely book begins with a discussion of the 2001 scandal that erupted when a series of photographs from 1968 emerged showing German foreign minister Joschka Fischer and a group of leftist street toughs assaulting a cop. Paul Berman, one of the leading essayists and intellectual historians of the New Left, uses this event as a springboard to reflect on a crucial question for Western democracies today: was the violence-tinged radicalism of the 1960s and 1970s a force for social good or for social ill? This wide-ranging history of antitotalitarianism explores the Left¹s response to human rights abuses around the world. Tracing the intellectual evolution of figures as various as Polish dissident Adam Michnik and Azar Nafisi (Reading Lolita in Tehran), Berman argues that liberals willing to use power to protect human rights are the true heirs of the radical ¹60s, and that the Islamic totalitarian impulse he identified in Terror and Liberalism must be opposed with vigour.
About the Author
Paul Berman is a contributing editor to The New Republic and Dissent and writes frequently for The New York Times Magazine. A senior fellow at the World Policy Institute, he lives in Brooklyn, NY.
