Includes bibliographical references and index.

Historic Europe: the medieval matrix and its internal contradictions, 1000-1400 -- Hussite Bohemia, 1415-1436: from heresy to proto-revolution -- Lutheran Germany, 1517-1555: the Reformation as semi-revolution -- Huguenot France, 1559-1598 -- The Netherlands' revolt, 1566-1609 -- England, 1640-1660-1688: from religious to political revolution -- America, 1776-1787: revolution as great good fortune -- France, 1789-1799: revolution as militant modernity -- From the first modern revolution to the first anticipated revolution, 1799-1848: the nineteenth century at a glance -- Marxism and the Second International, 1848-1914 -- Red October: the revolution to end all revolutions.

This book is a comparative history devoted to the revolutionary tradition in the West as it evolved over many centuries and reached its logical, though extreme, culmination in the Communist revolutions of the twentieth century. Unique in the breadth of its scope, "History's Locomotives" is also unique in its interpretation of the origins and history of socialism as well as the meanings of the Russian Revolution, the rise of the Soviet regime, and the ultimate collapse of the Soviet Union. The masterwork of a historian in whom a fine sense of historical particularity never interfered with the ability to see the large picture, this book explores religious conflicts in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Europe, the revolutions in England, American, and France, and the twentieth-century Russian explosions into revolution. Malia finds that twentieth-century revolutions have deep roots in European history and that revolutionary thought and action underwent a process of radicalization from one great revolution to the next. He offers an original view of the phenomenon of revolution and a fascinating assessment of its power as a driving force in history.