A thoughtful and thought-provoking study

Enjoyable and pacy

There is much to admire in this book ...to retell the history of democracy so vividly is no mean feat. His work serves as an important reminder that the price of democratic freedom is eternal vigilance

Includes all democracies - past and present, questioning our views, how they came about, and who fought for the cause and why

He writes lucid, accurate prose that carries heavy freights of information lightly

[Roger Osborne] impresses with another sweeping history

Intelligent, authoritative and extremely readable

This gripping account of their difficult relationship reads like a thriller.

Aldous deserves nothing but credit for the masterly way in which he weaves accounts from published memoirs and recently declassified US material into a pacey, almost thriller-like account of the meetings and telephone calls between these two political giants. This is a work of history that can be read at one sitting — a page-turner more than a page-folder.

It wasn't all sweetness and light between Maggie and Ronnie, as this account of their difficult relationship shows

Pankaj Mishra has produced a riveting account that makes new and illuminating connections. He follows the intellectual trail of this contested history with both intelligence and moral clarity. In the end we realise that what we are holding in our hands is not only a deeply entertaining and deeply humane book, but a balance sheet of the nature and mentality of colonisation

Highly readable and illuminating ... Mishra's analysis of Muslim reactions is particularly topical

Enormously ambitious but thoroughly readable, this book is essential reading for everyone who is interested in the processes of change that have led to the emergence of today's Asia

Sophisticated ... not so much polemic as cri de coeur, motivated by Mishra's keen sense of the world, East and West, hurtling towards its own destruction

Outstanding ... Mishra wears his scholarship lightly and weaves together the many strands of history into a gripping narrative ... The insights afforded by this book are too many to be enumerated ... Mishra performs a signal service to the future - by making us read the past in a fresh light

[Full of] complexity and nuance

Subtle, erudite and entertaining

Mishra allows the reader to see the events of two centuries anew, through the eyes of the journalists, poets, radicals and charismatics who criss-crossed Europe and Asia

A vital, nuanced argument ... prodigious