Socialism of Fools

This academic work by Michele Battini demands the full attention of the reader. Every sentence counts and the reader is rewarded by astute insights and detailed explanations. It is an important and highly interesting book.

Robert Fine, University of Warwick:
Socialism of Fools is an erudite and important book on the nature of modern anti-Semitism as seen through the words, thoughts, and ideas of anti-Semites. Thoughtful, insightful, enlightened, and based on intense scholarship, Battini's voice is much needed in the context of current debates on the history of anti-Semitism.

Nadia Urbinati, Columbia University:
This is an extraordinarily interesting and original book that will appeal to historians, political theorists, and scholars of cultural studies, religion, and Jewish studies. Battini engages with the vast primary and secondary literature with such mastery that he leaves the reader feeling well and truly informed.

Ira I. Katznelson, author of Desolation and Enlightenment: Political Knowledge After Total War, Totalitarianism, and the Holocaust (Columbia University Press).:
Offering learned readings of a wide array of sources in the aftermath of Jewish emancipation, Socialism of Fools persuasively situates the era's anti-Semitic ideas and movements within the larger context of Europe's economic, social, and political transformations and offers a provocative coda about current conundrums.

Carlo Ginzburg, University of California, Los Angeles:
A lucid, passionate book on a deeply disturbing subject and a thoughtful analysis of left-wing anti-Semitism throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Michele Battini's nuanced historical approach is a welcome antidote to a deeply rooted perception of anti-Semitism and anti-Judaism (different but undoubtedly related phenomena) as transhistorical entities.