LE SIÈCLE ROUGE

An illustrated world history of Communism from the October revolution to the fall of the Berlin Wall. “The Red Book”. The perfect combination of accessible text and powerful images, essential for learning about and understanding the 20th century.

Communism was born in 1917 and died in 1991, enjoying the typical life span of a human being, three-quarters of a century; but in those seventy-five years it shook up the world in all its dimensions, going far beyond politics and the history of ideas to “revolutionize” the economic, social and cultural spheres. It had an impact on every continent and nearly all countries. Its ideology, its acts, the great artists and writers who took up its cause for three generations, its many wars (civil and foreign) as well as its charismatic leaders (Lenin, Mao, Stalin, Castro et al.), its victories, its decline and fall – these had never before been explored in their entirety, in a wide-ranging and accessible chronological account, based on the most reliable sources and richly illustrated.

The selective, polished and perfectly contextualized entries, with introductions that provide a panorama of each decade, are illuminawted by dozens of maps and striking illustrations.

JEAN-CHRISTOPHE BUISSON is Deputy Director of Le Figaro Magazine and presents Historiquement show on the TV channel Histoire. He has written, among other books, 1917. L'année qui a changé le monde (1917, the year that changed the world), Assassinés (Assassinated) – licensed in China, Poland and Romania and with Emmanuel Hecht, Les grands vaincus de l'histoire (History's great losers) – licensed in Korea and Japan.