The latest major work published by Murray Bookchin - a leading thinker and activist of anarchism, communalism, and social ecology - is a four-volume history of the revolutionary movements that emerged in Europe and America during modern times, viewed through the lens of their libertarian dynamics.

This original and concise approach brings to light a vast array of new or overlooked materials regarding the social background and the democratic perspective of the great revolutions. It thus saves from historical amnesia the events and individuals who, even if fleetingly, gave flesh and bones to the most radical insights of freedom, democracy, and community.

It also suggests, in its own way - a way not only inspired by political philosophy but also documented here by historiography - the existence of a "revolutionary tradition" and the place it can occupy in the consciousness of younger generations. This first volume starts with the peasant wars at the end of the Middle Ages and progresses to the systematic examination of the English, American, and French revolutions.

The title of this book, "The Third Revolution," comes from something that might seem like an unexpected historical coincidence. The demand for a "Third Revolution" was indeed raised in two major revolutions: the French Revolution, in the last decade of the 18th century, and the Russian Revolution, in the early decades of the 20th...

As I examined the events of these two periods, I found it fascinating - and more than just a simple coincidence - that the very same demand, word for word, was made both in Paris and in Petrograd towards the end of two historically crucial revolutions, separated by such a large span of time. The two peoples who raised the demand presented profound differences in their social and cultural conditions... Nevertheless, they directed the same slogan against a seemingly revolutionary regime that they themselves had helped to bring to power and from which they now felt betrayed.