A landmark defense of civilization that illuminates the political degradations and intellectual fetishisms of our world.

From the author of The Harvest of Sorrow and one of the world's most respected humanists comes this long-awaited work of history and philosophy. The Dragons of Expectation--in the tradition of Isaiah Berlin's The Crooked Timber of Humanity and George Orwell's Essays--brilliantly traces how seductive ideas have come to corrupt modern minds, to often-disastrous effects. From the onset of the Enlightenment to the excesses of democracy, Stalinism, and liberalism, Robert Conquest masterfully examines how false nostrums have infected academia, politicians, and the public, showing how their reliance on "isms" and the destructive concepts of "People, Nation, and Masses" have resulted in a ruinous cycle of turbulence and war. Including analyses of Russia's October Revolution, World War II, and the Cold War that challenge common historical views, The Dragons of Expectation is one of the most important contributions to modern thought in recent years.