Culture

The World That Never Was: A True Story of Dreamers, Schemers, Anarchists, and Secret Agents by Alex Butterworth

The World That Never Was: A True Story of Dreamers, Schemers, Anarchists, and Secret Agents BY Alex Butterworth. Pantheon. Hardcover, 528 pages. $30.
The cover of The World That Never Was: A True Story of Dreamers, Schemers, Anarchists, and Secret Agents

From cries of “Long live dynamite!” to arguments for vegetarianism, the anarchist cause has been a very broad church. Often naive and under-theorized – although it has always had highly intelligent proponents and sympathizers, a current example being Noam Chomsky – anarchism has also been dogged by a reputation for ill-directed violence, leading to what Alex Butterworth describes as “the movement’s pariah status in perpetuity”.