Darker Nations: a People's History of the Third World

• Vijay Prashad
• New Press; January 2007
• Paperback; 384 pages

A landmark study that offers an alternative history of the Cold War from the point of view of the world's poor.

Here, from a brilliant young writer, is a paradigm-shifting history of both a utopian concept and global movement—the idea of the Third World. The Darker Nations traces the intellectual origins and the political history of the twentieth century attempt to knit together the world’s impoverished countries in opposition to the United States and Soviet spheres of influence in the decades following World War II.

Spanning every continent of the global South, Vijay Prashad’s fascinating narrative takes us from the birth of postcolonial nations after World War II to the downfall and corruption of nationalist regimes. A breakthrough book of cutting-edge scholarship, it includes vivid portraits of Third World giants like India’s Nehru, Egypt’s Nasser, and Indonesia’s Sukarno—as well as scores of extraordinary but now-forgotten intellectuals, artists, and freedom fighters. The Darker Nations restores to memory the vibrant though flawed idea of the Third World, whose demise, Prashad ultimately argues, has produced a much impoverished international political arena.

Vijay Prashad’s previous books include The Karma of Brown Folk and Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting. He is on the board of the Center for Third World Organizing and a co-founder of the Forum of Indian Leftists. He teaches at Trinity College, Connecticut, and lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.

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“Europe” is morally, spiritually indefensible. And today the indictment is brought against it . . . by tens and tens of thousands of millions of men who, from the depths of slavery, set themselves up as judges.
—AIMÉ CÉSAIRE, DISCOURSE ON COLONIALISM

Praise for Vijay Prashad’s The Karma of Brown Folk:

A refreshing oasis of original insight and unexpected affinity.
—MIKE DAVIS

Prashad’s considerable book is part of that clear-sighted assessment of a fast-changing people and world.
—TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT

He has a genius for selecting the precise detail that makes observations spring to life.
—A. MAGAZINE: INSIDE ASIAN AMERICA