Non-violence : a history beyond the myth / Domenico Losurdo ; translated by Gregory Elliott.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

We know of the blood and tears provoked by the projects of transformation of the world through war or revolution. Starting from the essay published in 1921 by Walter Benjamin, twentieth century philosophy has been committed to the criticism of violence, even when it has claimed to follow noble ends. But what do we know of the dilemmas, of the "betrayals," of the disappointments and tragedies which the movement of non-violence has suffered? This book tells a fascinating history: from the American Christian organizations in the first decades of the nineteenth century who wanted to eliminate slavery and war in a non-violent way, to the protagonists of movements--Thoreau, Tolstoy, Gandhi, Capitini, M. L. King, the Dalai Lama--who either for idealism or for political calculation flew the flag of non-violence, up to the leaders of today's "color revolutions."

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CHOICE Review

In attempting to make nonviolence into a myth, the Italian philosopher Losurdo (emer., philosophy, Univ. of Urbino, Italy) examines several theorists and practitioners of nonviolence from early Quakers and Martin Luther King Jr. in the US to Chinese demonstrators in Tiananmen Square. In the several cases he examines, the author finds that nonviolence rhetoric invariably occurs alongside some, and often considerable, violence. Losurdo is particularly taken with Gandhi, who occupies nearly half of the book. Presenting several cases in which Gandhi endorsed violence, such as his support for Britain in WW I, the author portrays Gandhi's nonviolence as a sham. The Dalai Lama also emerges as an endorser of both nonviolence and violence. Forcefully argued, the book, however, lacks a semblance of balance and passes over the ambiguities that accompany much political language. Summing Up: Recommended. Research collections. --Ronald J. Terchek, emeritus, University of Maryland College Park