One of Foreign Affairs' Picks for Best of Books 2018
A . . . successful example of big think history. If war built the state, it also helped build the Communist Party. Vladimir Lenin's faction, the Bolsheviks, was particularly aided by World War I. And Communism, once in power, reversed Clausewitz's famous dictum and made politics war by other means. The party often attacked the people--first in the Russia of Lenin and Stalin, but most especially in Mao Zedong's China, from the Hundred Flowers movement to the Great Leap Forward and then the Cultural Revolution, killing untold millions of people. It's a lively if depressing story.---Thomas E. Ricks, New York Times Book Review
The historiography on Marxism, as well as communist movements in general, is notoriously inaccessible; McAdams delivers a lucid and beautifully written volume that defies the norm, providing a highly readable study of the party. * Publishers Weekly *
Important. . . . Brilliant. . . . It's been nearly a decades since Robert Service's Comrades presented readers with a history of Communism on a global scale, and although the idea is still as dead as Jacob Marley, McAdams finds even more to tell about it, and is fascinating and judicial the whole time he does so.---Steve Donoghue, Open Letters Monthly
A brilliant and sweeping introduction to one of the most provocative political institutions of our times. . . . Vanguard of the Revolution provides intellectual provocation, historical breadth and an inspiration to take better care of our fragile democracies.---Yvonne Howell, Times Higher Education
It is a broad, comparative history of communist parties in power, one which required a tremendous amount of knowledge to write, and subtly but successfully undermines the easy equation of communism with totalitarianism that has been a liberal talking point for far too long.---Patrick Iber, Los Angeles Review of Books
The book excels in explaining the repertoire of methods whereby the new communist regimes that came to power after the Second World War tried to maintain their momentum. . . . Carefully plotted.---Stuart Macintyre, Sydney Morning Herald
Impressive.---Joshua Muravchik, Commentary
McAdams wrestles with a . . . profound puzzle: How was it, given the failure of Marx's prophecies, that his ideas continued to animate communist parties and eventually led them to power in 24 countries?---Robert Legvold, Foreign Affairs
A groundbreaking book, Vanguard of the Revolution is a terrific read. . . . A magnificent book on [communism's] history and impact.---Andrew Fedynsky, Ukrainian Weekly
[Vanguard of the Revolution] offers an important new historiography of the idea not just of the Communist party but of Communism in the twentieth and now twenty-first century.---Bill V. Mullen, Russian Review
[T]his remains a compelling and necessary book.---George Bodie, Slavonic & East European Review
Vanguard of the Revolution is a very readable synthesis of the history of the communist party, from Marx and Engels's manifesto to the collapse of the USSR. McAdams handles both the global sweep and the local details of each case he covers with an impressive assurance and levelheadedness, all while keeping his distance from the tired Cold War polemics that usually surround this subject.---Tony Wood, The Nation
McAdams explores the societal conditions that brought Communist movements to power. Ranging over the particular histories of Russia, China, Cuba, and many places in between, he deftly describes the upheavals wrought by modernization, war, and colonial oppression to explain Communism's appeal. . . . McAdams is a master of classification and discerning difference. . . . As we now focus on ever darker challenges-illiberalism and xenophobic nationalism, environmental degradation, and religious fundamentalism-we run the risk of seeing Communism as a benign, quaint bete noire of the twentieth century. Fortunately, Vanguard of the Revolution reminds us otherwise.---Catherine Epstein, American Historical Review
