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Title: Reflections on a Ravaged Century

Author: Robert Conquest

Narrator: Ron Butler

Format: Unabridged

Length: 11 hrs and 50 mins

Language: English

Release date: 03-12-14

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 38 votes

Genres: History, World

Publisher's Summary:

Robert Conquest has been called by Paul Johnson "our greatest living modern historian". As a new century begins, Conquest offers an illuminating examination of our past failures and a guide to where we should go next. Graced with one of the most acute gifts for political prescience since Orwell, Conquest assigns responsibility for our centurys cataclysms not to impersonal economic or social forces but to the distorted ideologies of revolutionary Marxism and National Socialism. The final, sobering chapters of Reflections on a Ravaged Century concern themselves with some coming storms, notably that of the European Union, which Conquest believes is an economic, cultural, and geographical misconception divisive of the West and doomed to failure. Winner of the Ingersoll Prize; winner of the Richard M. Weaver Prize; a New York Times Notable Book.

Critic Reviews:

"Illuminates the past with a mighty searchlight and clears away mountains of nonsense." (Gabriel Schoenfeld, Wall Street Journal)

Members Reviews:

A great historian and an economic study

Conquest, one of the great historians of our time, shows his commanding knowledge of events throughout the world, drawing extensively on the works of notable figures and his own experiences. Its a rather serious read, demands ones full attention, and I would not take it up for leisurely enjoyment. Even so, the narrator does a great job making the book a pleasant experience. As an expert in Soviet history, Conquest deals in mostly with the impacts of communism. My criticism is that he, presents history as mainly an economic conflict of capitalism, communism, socialism, etc. This mistakes the superstructure for the foundations. History is shaped by a societys theistic beliefs, which dictate its moral and ethical behavior. Considering whats going in in the Middle East, India, Myanmar, with recent US elections, and pretty much everywhere, its hard to see history in terms of rubles and cents. These are difficult issues, so I can understand its easier to take a materialistic view and say they are solvable by trade agreements, treaties, and the dissolving of treaties. I would recommend the book for broadening ones understanding of recent events and where we are now, but not as offering solutions to root causes of the ravages of our past century.

Former Marxists make the best counterrevolutionaries.

The scope of this book is very wide, but it is an interesting book for those with some familiarity of the topics discussed. This book is perhaps more relevant today then when it was published. For those trying to make sense of the ideologies that prevail today it's important understand the influence of Marxism had in shaping them.