Edmund Wilson’s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Wilson) magnum opus, To the Finland Station (1940), is a stirring account of revolutionary politics, people, and ideas from the French Revolution through the Paris Commune to the Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia.
The work is really a history of revolutionary thought and the birth of socialism, from its inception in France to the arrival of Lenin at the Finlyandsky Rail Terminal in St. Petersburg in 1917. At once sweeping and detailed, closely reasoned and passionately argued, it paints an unforgettable picture – alive with conspirators and philosophers, utopians and nihilists – of the making of the modern world. This deserves a place in the bookcase of anyone interested in how the world we live in came about.
544 pages in Phoenix paperback edition
ISBN 978-0753818008
Edmund Wilson