For context: Rudolf Rocker was a German anarchist, and this book was published shortly after he fled the Third Reich to live in London. Rocker rose to popularity especially in the Jewish-anarchist scene in London

Rocker writes very passionately and his arguments are full of energy, at its' best this book echoed off the walls as I read it. It goes quite far back for an investigation of the development of nationalism in Germany and elsewhere, and it looks almost exclusively at English, French and German history (whilst also looking at Italy and Spain). I found it often enlightening

This was one of the first nonfiction books I read, I was fairly young when I read it. In general it taught me a lot about history (I didn't know who Machiavelli was, when I picked it up) and about writing