The twentieth century

As you can probably tell, I've recently been a little absorbed in the history of the Communist parties of the world and on the mid-twentieth century confrontation between various totalitarianisms, and how the left did or didn't measure up to it (see Stop The (Second World) War!,The men who saved democracy, Alexander Cockburn and CounterPunch (on Claud Cockburn and the Spanish Civil War) and The European Resistance Archive).

On this topic, read Werner Cohn's very good review of Robert Service's Comrades: A History of International Communism at New Appeal to Reason or (for the whole review) at Amazon.

And Snoopy has a very good post on the Nicholson Baker' Human Smoke, as discussed by Martin in the post linked to here.