Fascism: Past, Present, Future

Walter Laqueur provides one of the most concise overviews of Fascism in it is various stages. The book is divided into three pieces with the first covering the historical aspects of Fascism from the 1930's with Hitler and Mussolini. The present in the second half covers the post world war II era through the 1990's and the way that neofacist and skinhead movements changed fascism face. Finally the last part covers the evolution of fascism in post soviet republics and Middle Eastern countries. My one major complaint of the book is that it tends to focus far more on Nazi Germany and leaves out Italy's contribution to the ideology of Fascism. While the book tries to do a lot in a very short number of pages it tends to focus on Nazi Germany and then expand on the Nazi contributions to the present and fascist era. To be certain it mentions Italy many times but never really assesses Mussolini's fascism. Overall though this is an excellent overview of fascism and very well written for those interested in either a historical or a philosophical case study of this ideology.