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The Distorted Past : A Reinterpretation of Europe (Making of Europe) by Josep Fontana, Colin Smith (Translator) Blackwell Publishers: Oxfordand Cambridge, UK, USA: 1995. (pp. 220)

Josep Fontana’s fine book forces one to utterly reevaluate the "idea of Europe" as an identity, a place and a history. This is a powerful book written by a Catalunyan born in Barcelona who taught contemporary and economic history at the universities of Barcelona. Through the eyes of a Fourth World historian we examine the peoples of a Europe consumed by defining themselves as superior only by comparison to their neighbors whom they described as less civilized, primitive or barbaric. The roots of modern racialism world-wide can be seen in the history of various European elites who possess a sense of elevated personal identity and self-image that the author contends comes from a persistent illusion created and fostered to ensure material and social dominance of some groups over others. Fontana undertakes an incisive re-examination of the conventional wisdom that accepts without question such "ideas as classical heritage, medieval Christendom, reformation and counter-reformation, absolutism, and the idea of progress." This important thinker from Catalunya, a country in Spain, raises the level of Fourth World scholarship to a new and important level.

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