The World After Communism:

The collapse of communism at the end of the 1980s was hailed as a triumph for freedom, but initial euphoria soon turned to a mixture of pessimism and regret. The demise of the established Cold War structures threatened to unleash pandemonium on the world, while the passing of socialism seemed to leave money-making and ethnic violence as the only competitors for the future. In this trenchant polemic Robert Skidelsky reasserts the need for optimism. The collapse of communism, he argues, is the most hopeful event to have happened in the twentieth century, not least by reviving the liberal promise shattered by the first world war.