Fascination with the Persecutor: George L. Mosse and the Catastrophe of Modern Man

Gentile, Emilio

ISBN 10: 0299334309 / ISBN 13: 9780299334307

Published by University of Wisconsin Press, 2021

About this Item

2021. Hardcover. . . . . .

Seller Inventory # V9780299334307

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Fascination with the Persecutor: George L. Mosse and the Catastrophe of Modern Man
• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
• Publication Date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0299334309
• ISBN 13: 9780299334307
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

In 1933, George L. Mosse fled Berlin and settled in the United States, where he went on to become a renowned historian at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Through rigorous and innovative scholarship, Mosse uncovered the forces that spurred antisemitism, racism, nationalism, and populism. His transformative work was propelled by a desire to know his own persecutors and has been vital to generations of scholars seeking to understand the cultural and intellectual origins and mechanisms of Nazism.
 
This translation makes Emilio Gentile’s groundbreaking study of Mosse’s life and work available to English language readers. A leading authority on fascism, totalitarianism, and Mosse’s legacy, Gentile draws on a wealth of published and unpublished material, including letters, interviews, lecture plans, and marginalia from Mosse’s personal library. Gentile details how the senior scholar eschewed polemics and employed rigorous academic standards to better understand fascism and the “catastrophe of the modern man”—how masculinity transformed into a destructive ideology. As long as wars are waged over political beliefs in popular culture, Mosse’s theories of totalitarianism will remain as relevant as ever.

About the Authors

Emilio Gentile is professor emeritus of history at Sapienza University in Rome.

Anne C. Tedeschi is a book conservator. Her co-translated works include The Jews in Mussolini’s Italy by Michele Sarfatti and the award-winning The Cheese and the Worms by Carlo Ginzburg.

Stanley G. Payne is a professor emeritus of history at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His many books include The Franco Regime: 1936–1975; Fascism: Comparison and Definition; and Spain’s First Democracy: The Second Republic, 1931–1936.