The Dragons of Expectation

Book excerpt: The publication of The Dragons of Expectation in 2005 reaffirmed Robert Conquest's stature as a leading intellectual and one of the world's great humanists. In the tradition of Isaiah Berlin's The Crooked Timber of Humanity and George Orwell's Essays, this book brilliantly traces how seductive ideas have come to corrupt modern minds; to often disastrous effects. In what Publishers Weekly called "a frontal assault on the pieties of the left," 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 fresh analyses of Russia's October Revolution, World War II, and the Cold War, The Dragons of Expectation is one of the most important contributions to modern thought in recent years.