"The Dialogue in Hell between Montesquieu and Machiavelli" is the source of the world's most infamous literary forgery, the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion". John Waggoner's commentary on Maurice Joly's dialogue seeks to update the sordid legacy of the Protocols and redeem Joly's original work.



The Dialogue in Hell between Montesquieu and Machiavelli is the source of the world's most infamous literary forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. John Waggoner's superb translation of and commentary on Joly's Dialogue—the first faithful translation in English—seeks not only to update the sordid legacy of the Protocols but to redeem Joly's original work for serious study in its own right, rather than through the lens of antisemitism. Waggoner's work vindicates a man who was neither an antisemite nor a supporter of the kind of tyrannical politics the Protocols subsequently served and presents Maurice Joly, once much maligned and too long ignored, as one of the nineteenth century's foremost political thinkers.