The Democratic Age is the first comprehensive study of political thought in Europe that takes the entire continent into account and provides the historical background necessary to understand the much-discussed post-democratic status quo. It begins in 1918 and extends to the collapse of the real socialist states in Eastern Europe at the end of the 1980s. In a masterful blend of intellectual and cultural history, Jan-Werner Müller outlines which political ideas and figures shaped the era of ideological extremes until 1945 and which have significantly influenced Europe's fate thereafter.