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Book Review
Methods/Theory
George L. Mosse. The Fascist Revolution: Toward a General Theory of Fascism. New York: Howard Fertig. 1999. Pp. xviii, 230. $35.00.
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This collection of essays was published shortly after the death of George L. Mosse. Mosse was one of the pioneers of the study of fascism and Nazism, and he has had considerable influence. Several of his works, such as The Crisis of German Ideology (published in 1964 and reprinted in 1988), and Toward the Final Solution: A History of European Racism (published in 1978 and reprinted in 1997), have become classics. The work now under review aims at presenting to a new generation of students a number of essays by Mosse or chapters he contributed to various collective works, all published in the course of the last forty years. |
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The most important of these essays is the seminal essay that gives the whole collection its conceptual framework. This essay, "Toward a General Theory of Fascism," is very well known. First published in 1979, it is presented here in a revised form, which is not the case with the other essays, which are simply reprinted. One finds in this essay the qualities associated with Mosse: a legendary analytical capacity, a tremendous breadth of humanistic and literary culture, a comprehensive and comparative understanding of the phenomena under discussion, and an impeccable knowledge of the sources. Even today, when recent works on fascism (such as those by Roger Griffin, Roger Eatwell, and Stanley G. Payne, to mention only those published in the last few years) have taken the study of the subject much further, Mosse's pioneering work has lost none of its original freshness. |
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