Written in political exile in New Zealand during the World War II and first published in two volumes in 1945, Karl Popper's
The Open Society and its Enemies was hailed by Bertrand Russell as a "vigorous and profound defence of democracy".
Its now legendary attack on the philosophies of Plato, Hegel and Marx prophesied the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and exposed the fatal flaws of socially engineered political systems.
