What book are you reading now?

[southbiochem]

"Europa contra Europa : 1914-1945" from Julián Casanova

(It should be easy but it translates "Europe vs Europe: 1914-1945"

A well constructed historical review on how WWI destroyed the social and political structures of the time (most notably through the Russian Revolution and the collapse of 4 continental empires), and the troubles that liberal parliamentary democracies faced in establishing themeselves in those new countries, that following a reactionary movement against the rising threat of revolutionary communism menacing to spread from Soviet Russia, and later having to deal with the effects of the Great Depression, fell one by one into authoritarian alternatives of government, ending with 18 out of 28 european states becoming dictatorships from the right wing (except for the left-wing dictatorship of Soviet Russia). Obviously there's an individual chapter dedicated for theeach of the 4 most extreme and complete forms of these tendencies: Franco's Spain, Mussolini's Italy, Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union. Finally, the author analizes this "European civil war" of Fascism vs parliamentary democracy and communism, communism vs capitalism and fascism and the unsuccesful attempts of the few democracies left to avoid another major conflict, leading to the ultimate expression of europe vs europe hate: WWII, and how it left a continent in ruins.