The "Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves", (Va Pensiero), from Verdi's opera Nabucco (1842) attained great political significance. Va Pensiero became the Italians' song of liberation, for, in the oppressed Hebrews, they found a symbol of their own longing for reunification with Lombardy, which was occupied by Austria. The unison chorus (one of the few da capo choruses in all opera) became the underground "national hymn". And the composer's name became V.E.R.D.I, a slogan meaning Vittorio Emmanuale Rei de

Italia ("Victor Emmanual, King of Italy") - a reference to the sole native dynasty in Italy and the focus of nationalist hopes for unity.

Az igazi szkinhed nem náci, hanem patrióta.

The way to preserve freedom and rationality in modern life is to persuade -- or force -- people to switch from ethnic to civic nationalism. If only, so the argument goes, we could persuade Serbians -- or Kosovars, or even the QuÈbÈcois -- to replace their visions of ethnic or cultural unity with our vision of civic solidarity, then nationalism need no longer promote ethnic violence and intolerance.

So what is Kohn saying and what is he missing about nationalism? In a nutshell, his theory is that nationalism is a will, a sentiment, a state of mind, mostly referring to and pertinent in politics. "Nationalism - he writes - is a state of mind in which the supreme loyalty of the individual is felt to be due the nation-state" (p. 9). This state of mind emerged, according to Kohn, in the 18th century, initially in England (beginning with the 17th century), where it was facilitated by ideas of individual freedoms and rights and by the Puritan messianism. Building on previous social structures, English nationalism emerged as a civilized, universal and peaceful concept (though one gets to wonder from whose perspective...). The corruption of nationalism comes with German Romanticism and subsequently with the passion of the French Revolution and the Central & Eastern European national 'awakenings'.

In home politics he was a Little Englander, a true hater of jingoism and imperialism, and according to his lights a true friend of democracy.

ilbert posits what he calls "the constitutive principle of nationalism": the view that the widely varying types of nationalism we see in today’s world "can best be explained by regarding the nation as a group of a kind that has a right to statehood" (1). The book therefore attempts "to classify the accounts of nationhood that can be given in terms of the kinds of argument for statehood they support" (1). This approach has the merit of avoiding the pitfalls suffered by Ernest Gellner’s dictum that nationalism is the principle which holds that "the political and national unit should be congruent." As Gilbert points out, not all nationalists hold that only nations are entitled to statehood (17).

Thus the French entertained the notion of active civic participation and popular will. But, as Timothy Baycroft notes, French nationalists - including Republicans - eagerly used 'ethnic' characteristics, with Republican school textbooks tracing French history back to 'our ancestors the Gauls' and Joan of Arc

But what evidence—other than the stentorian passages of the Communist Manifesto, and our duo’s fulminations against nationalism as phenomenon and as political program—is there to support the notion that they failed to rigorously theorize it? "Not much," is Erica Benner’s spirited and cogently argued reply.

An attempt to bring light to the controversial matter of Croat nationalism, Mark Biondich's Stjepan Radic, the Croat Peasant Party, and the Politics of Mass Mobilization, 1904-1928 makes a good start in explaining South Slavic nationalism by dissecting and particularizing it. Biondich's book is focused on a very limited period of time and is centered on one influential Croat historical figure; it is not only a study of party politics, or a monograph, but an account of a top-down nationalist movement. The Croat Peasant Party's 'third way ideology' (79) - with emphasis on state rights, as opposed to the all-encompassing Yugoslavism and the separatist Croat nationalist movement -went on to become an influential mass (rather than class) party, mostly because of Radic's skillfulness in attracting peasants and in making political deals with the intelligentsia (66-67).

However, what I deem to be probably the most interesting part of the whole book is the discussion by Frank Uekoetter in chapter 4 of the evolution of air pollution control in Nazi Germany and of the effects of polycracy on environmental policy-making. In this chapter, through an analysis of the debate between diverse bodies of the regime on how to approach air pollution, Uekoetter gives us insight into the ways Nazi polycracy actually worked and shows us how, at the end of the line and notwithstanding the claims of propaganda, pragmatism and continuity with the Weimar period characterized Nazi environmental policy-making.