Description
Book SynopsisThe 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.
Trade ReviewExhilarating...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 *
