FBI Files on Nikola Tesla (1940-1983)
Filed under records | Tags: · electricity, history, history of science, invention, marxism, politics, science, security, yugoslavia
Released through the Freedom of Information Act.
Publisher Federal Bureau of Information, undated
FBI Records: The Vault series
290 pages
publisher
Myth: The FBI has Nikola Tesla’s plans for a “death ray” (FBI: Top 10 Myths)
Lucio Magri: The Tailor of Ulm: Communism in the Twentieth Century (2009/2011)
Filed under book | Tags: · cold war, communism, history, italy, left, politics
A fascinating analysis and account of the decline and fall of Western communism by a participant observer.
Twenty years have passed since the Italian Communists’ last Congress in 1991, in which the death of their party was decreed. It was a deliberate death, accelerated by the desire for a “new beginning.” That new beginning never came, and the world lost an invaluable, complex political, organizational and theoretical heritage.
In this detailed and probing work, Lucio Magri, one of the towering intellectual figures of the Italian Left, assesses the causes for the demise of what was once one of the most powerful and vibrant communist parties of the West. The PCI marked almost a century of Italian history, from its founding in 1921 to the partisan resistance, the turning point of Salerno in 1944 to the de-Stalinization of 1956, the long ’68 to the “historic compromise,” and to the opportunity—missed forever—of democratic transformation.
With rigor and passion, The Tailor of Ulm merges an original and enlightening interpretation of Italian communism with the experience of a militant “heretic” into a riveting read—capable of broadening our insights into contemporary Italy, and the twentieth-century communist experience.
First published as Il Sarto di Ulm, il Saggiatore SPA, Milan, 2009
Translated by Patrick Camiller
Publisher Verso, 2011
ISBN 1844676986, 9781844676989
434 pages
review (Donald Sassoon, The Observer)
review (John Green, review31)
Alberto Toscano: Fanaticism: On the Uses of an Idea (2010)
Filed under book | Tags: · history, philosophy, politics, psychoanalysis, religion
A genealogy of fanaticism—unearthing its long history, before it became a tool in the Clash of Civilizations.
The idea of fanaticism as a deviant or extreme variant of an already irrational set of religious beliefs is today invoked by the West in order to demonize and psychologize any non-liberal politics. Alberto Toscano’s compelling and erudite counter-history explodes this accepted interpretation in exploring the critical role fanaticism played in forming modern politics and the liberal state. Tracing its development from the traumatic Peasants’ War of early sixteenth-century Germany to contemporary Islamism, Toscano tears apart the sterile opposition of ‘reasonableness’ and fanaticism. Instead, in a radical new interpretation, he places the fanatic at the very heart of politics, arguing that historical and revolutionary transformations require a new understanding of his role. Showing how fanaticism results from the failure to formulate an adequate emancipatory politics, this illuminating history sheds new light on an idea that continues to dominate debates about faith and secularism.
Publisher Verso, 2010
ISBN 184467424X, 9781844674244
277 pages
review (Steven Poole, The Guardian)
review (Evgeni V. Pavlov, Rethinking Marxism)
review (Tom Eyers, Marx & Philosophy Review of Books)