The last years of the nineteenth century saw the birth of a new phenomenon: international terrorism. Bombings and assassinations shook the great cities of Europe and America, threatening social order. Fiendish networks of anarchist conspiritors were blamed and the public whipped into a frenzy of anxiety.
The reality was rather different. These dramatic events were only the most visible part of a longer, clandestine struggle waged between the forces of revolution and reaction, in which little was as it seemed. Alex Butterworth interweaves group biography, cultural history and meticulous detective work to create a revelatory account of the age. Both intimate and panoramic, it is a story with uncanny resonances for today.
Publisher: Vintage Publishing
ISBN: 9780099551928
Number of pages: 560
Weight: 383 g
Dimensions: 198 x 129 x 33 mm
Exhilarating...almost any paragraph packs more action than an entire Dan Brown novel - Financial Times
Butterworth has created an impressive work which will captivate those unfamiliar with anarchist history and teach even specialists much that they did not know before - Independent
Compelling and insightful... The World That Never Was is a compelling narrative history both of a generation of demonised and battered - but optimistic - revolutionaries...and of the political police forces ranged against them - Stuart Christie, Guardian
A rich and passionate account of the world's first international terrorist campaign... Brilliant... A thrilling and important book - Sunday Times
One of the most absorbing depictions of the dark underside of radical politics in many years...a riveting account, teeming with intrigue and adventure and packed with the most astonishing characters - New Statesman
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