What is the Left? More accurately, what is left of the Left? The Left was an active rainbow of ideologies until Lenin's Soviet Union went belly-up and Mao Zedong's Communists officially adopted heresy under the guidance of Chairman Deng, who did not care what the color of the cat was as long as it caught mice. The Red Book of Mao was dumped for the Black Book of Deng; red and black became the colors of the ink on the new Chinese national balance sheet, and red was not the preferred hue.

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"After Tamerlane" by John Darwin is a good two-in-one -- read it to learn, and also escape -- because the thriving detail is great fun, because it subverts official wisdom about the British and other empires with great panache, and because it is weighty enough to hold the towel down on a windy day at the beach.