Lies, passions & illusions
Subtitle: the democratic imagination in the twentieth century
By: François Furet ; edited with an introduction by Christophe Prochasson ;  translated by Deborah Furet
Contributors: Prochasson, Christophe, editor, writer of introduction; Furet, Deborah, translator
Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
Published: 2014
Place of publication: Chicago; London
Language: eng
Number of pages: 89
ISBN-13: 9780226114491; 9780226157306
Subjects: Communism; History
Other titles: Lies, passions and illusions
Work titles: Inventaires du communisme
Description: Widely considered one of the leading historians of the French Revolution, Franc̦ois Furet was a maverick for his time, shining a critical light on the entrenched Marxist interpretations that prevailed during the mid-twentieth century. Lies, Passion, and Illusions is a fitting capstone to this celebrated author's oeuvre: a late-career conversation with the philosopher Paul Ricoeur on the twentieth century writ large. This conversation would be, sadly, Furet's last - he died while Ricoeur was completing his edits. Ricoeur did not want to publish his half without Furet's approval, so what remains is Furet's alone, an astonishingly cohesive meditation on the political passions of the twentieth century, a century of violence and turmoil, of unprecendented welath and progress, in which history advanced, for better or worse, in quantum leaps. Whether new to Furet or deeply familiar with his work, readers will find thought-provoking assessments on every page, a deeply moving look back at one of the most tumultuous periods of history and how we might learn and look forward from it. -- from dust jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 83-89) and index.
Table of contents: title: Lies, passions, and illusions; title: The end of a world?; title: On the nation: the universal and the particular; title: The socialist movement, the nation, and the war; title: The past and the future of the revolution; title: The historian's pursuit; title: The seductions of Bolshevism; title: Critique of totalitarianism; title: History lessons for the future?