In a previous work, Holy Madness: Romantics, Patriots, and Revolutionaries, 1776-1871 (Viking, 2000), Zamoyski chronicled the era and Weltanschaung of the Romantic revolutionaries. In his new book, he turns to the conservatives who governed Europe in the five decades following the storming of the Bastille. Here he traces how their reactions to real and imagined revolutions and conspiracies created the very atmosphere in which new kinds of revolutionaries, ones who would overthrow the old order completely in 1917-21, could flourish. The author also chroniles the paranoia that arose among the governing classes; how it gave rise to secret police forces, censorship, and other repressive laws and institutions; how those institutions propagated that paranoia in a vicious cycle, eventually creating a mindset and toxic political atmosphere still found throughout Western world.
The book is a powerful indictment of viewing everything through the lens of conspiracy and refracting every fact, real or imagined, through that it. The book is at its best in discussing Alexander I and Metternich, but the whole work is readable and scholarly, filled with memorable characters while being grounded in primary sources. Highly recommended.
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