The book is very uneven. Some parts are exhilarating to read and intellectually provacative. Others are plodding and dull enough to serve as a soporific. Argument seems to be made too often by assertion, with a few supporting quotes from arbitrary places as weak buttresses for weighty premises.

Nevertheless the analysis of the principles of totalitarianism and their relationship to loneliness and a sort of monomanaical obsession with developing the consequences of an ideology are fascinating reading, as are the portions dealing with the relationship of imperialism and industrial capitalism to the development of fascist ideas.

Ultimately the book strikes me as an excellent essay collection, straddled somewhere between history and philosophy.