Visões e ilusões políticas

I am pleased to report that the Portuguese edition of my first book, Political Visions and Illusions, has just been released by Brazilian publisher Vida Nova: Visões e ilusões políticas (although the website lists it as not yet available). I look forward to receiving a copy in the near future. Incidentally, the translator is my good friend and colleague Lucas Grassi Freire. Obrigado, Lucas, e obrigado, Vida Nova!

One hundred years later: the Psalms and the First World War

Everyone knows how it all started. It was the end of June in 1914. Tensions had been building for decades among the rival European powers. The heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, was visiting Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina, when he and his wife were assassinated by a Serb nationalist named Gavrilo Princip. Vienna’s annexation of that province six years earlier had nearly led to war then, but now the real thing was only one month away. When the dust had cleared and the war was over four years later, some sixteen million people had died, and the world was never the same again. Ancient empires fell, with kings and emperors toppled from their thrones and exiled. Entire populations were cruelly uprooted from their homes, simply because they happened to live on the wrong side of arbitrary boundaries set during and after hostilities had ended.