Revel's analysis helps to make sense of the latest version of the totalitarian temptation, this time the temptation of radical Islam (though "Last Exit to Utopia" does not explicitly broach the subject). Strange as it may seem, today's Western "progressives," whose domestic political fixations include gay marriage and abortion rights, nonetheless frequently find themselves making common cause with Muslim fanatics for whom such things are anathema.

This seemingly strange affiliation has partly to do with a shared loathing, among radical leftists and radical Islamists, of the U.S. and Israel. But as Revel astutely notes, the deeper bond is what he calls the "excommunication of modernity," a mark of the left going back to the primitivist and anti-civilizational musings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The Islamists understand this commonality as well: Among the doctrinal sources cited by Osama bin Laden, one finds not only the Quran but also the works of Noam Chomsky.

Anyone who thinks the totalitarian temptation lies buried in Lenin's mausoleum would do well to read this book, a fitting literary capstone in the career of one of France's true immortals

Bret Stephens