Fascisms

To understand, rather than passively accept, what is happening, it is necessary and possible to place it in context. History is not a warehouse of analogies, but their museum. Gathered together, they teach a lesson for the future, revealing the present. Alexander Genis's book, author of intellectual bestsellers ("Dovlatov and the Surroundings", "The Bookman's Kamasutra", "Personalities: Among Contemporaries") is a collection of essays. Nine chapters with a montage of quotes, lyrical and memoir-like insertions describe totalitarian regimes in different countries - from Austria and Germany to Italy, Spain, Japan, and the GDR. The book concludes with an essay on the Aesopian language of domestic culture, where war has become a universal metaphor.