{"product_id":"the-bullets-song-romantic-violence-and-utopia-9780684809076","title":"The Bullet's Song: Romantic Violence and Utopia","description":"\u003cp\u003eA hidden moral history of the twentieth century unfolds in William Pfaffs fascinating story of writers  artists  intellectual soldiers  and religious revolutionaries implicated in the centurys physical and moral violence. They were motivated by romanticism  nationalism  utopianism -- and the search for transcendence. To our twenty-first century  already plunged -- once again -- into visionary terrorism and utopian quests  they leave a warning.... The account begins with Italys Futurists  who glorified war as \"the worlds only hygiene\"; painted speed  action  and noise; invented \"found sound\" and chromatic pianos; thought violence sublime; and demanded \"reconstruction of the universe.\" Gabriele DAnnunzio  poet  playwright  and nationalist buccaneer  created a revolutionary utopia in a Dalmatian city stolen in 1919 from Woodrow Wilson and the Versailles Treaty makers. In doing so  he invented the political style and rituals of Fascism  as well as Third World liberation. T.E. Lawrence  archaeologist and spy  guided the Arab revolt against the Turks  becoming both \"Uncrowned King of Arabia\" and masochist secular saint. Ernst Jnger  artist and scientist  the German armys most decorated hero of World War I  made heroism a political ideology and became intellectual leader of the National Cause. Hitler was a follower. In World War II Jnger plotted Hitlers assassination and survived to become a symbol of Franco-German reconciliation. Willi Mnzenberg  Lenins propaganda genius and an original member of the Comintern  invented the political \"front\" organization  created the Sacco and Vanzetti case  and seduced a generation of \"innocents\" to the Communist cause before becoming a dissident himself. He wasstrangled by Soviet agents in a French forest. Andr Malraux  fantasist \"Byron of the 1930s \" world-famous novelist  emulator of T.E. Lawrence  and make-believe leader of the Chinese revolution  discovered \"that daydreaming gives rise to action.\" He created and led an air squadron for Republican Spain  wrote himself into the script of the French Resistance as a hero -- and became one. Arthur Koestler  the most famous scientific journalist in Europe  was a Comintern spy in Spain; condemned to death there  he abandoned the cause and wrote Darkness at Noon  the most influential anti-Communist work of its time  before committing suicide in 1976. Others with roles in The Bullets Song are Benito Mussolini  Filippo Tommaso Marinetti  Che Guevara  Charles de Foucauld  Simone Weil  Jean-Paul Sartre  Simone de Beauvoir  Europes terrorists of the 1970s  and \"Popski\" -- Vladimir Peniakoff -- the honorable man who found happiness in leading his private army to war.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45279863177269,"sku":"ByrdShop_0684809079","price":30.74,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780684809076.jpg?v=1780614409","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/the-bullets-song-romantic-violence-and-utopia-9780684809076","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}