Circle in the Darkness recounts veteran journalist Diana Johnstone's lifelong effort to understand what is going on in the world, seeking the truth about our troubled times beyond the veils of government propaganda and media deception. For Johnstone, the political is personal. From her experience of Cold War hostilities as a student in Yugoslavia, in the movement against the U.S. war against Vietnam, in May '68, in professional and alternative journalism, in the historic peace movement of the 1980s that led to the reunification of Germany, in the transformation of the German Greens from peace to war party and the European Union's sacrifice of democracy to "globalization", her critical viewpoint dissects events and identifies trends.
She recounts in detail how the Western left betrayed its historical principles of social justice and peace and let itself be lured into approval of aggressive U.S.-NATO wars on the fallacious grounds of "human rights". Subjects range from caustic analysis of the pretentious confusion of French philosophers to the stories of many courageous individuals whose struggle for peace and justice ended in deep personal tragedy, with a great deal in between.
Circle in the Darkness is a lucid, uncompromising tour through half a century of contemporary history intended especially for those who may aspire against all obstacles to change its course for the better.

Diana Johnstone, PhD, a native of Minnesota, raised in New Deal Washington, has spent more than half her life in Europe as a political observer and journalist, working for Agence France Presse, for In These Times as European Correspondent, and as press officer for the Green Group in the European Parliament. She holds a BA in Russian Area studies and a PhD in French literature. She is author of three books including Fools' Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO and Western Delusions., and co-author with her father, Paul H. Johnstone, of From Mad to Madness: Inside Pentagon Nuclear War. Planning.