Tariq Ali, one of the most ardent radicals of the 1960s, has not given up hope of worldwide social democracy. In the epilogue of his contribution to Icon's series of easy-to-understand graphic histories of ideas (from Jesus for Beginners to Cyberspace for Beginners), Ali writes: "The analysis of politics and economics provided by Karl Marx is currently unfashionable, but no serious analysis of global capitalism can ignore the author of Capital or those who have sought to develop his tradition. For that reason alone, Trotsky's ideas retain their relevance for the next century." Leon Trotsky, born Lev Davydovich Bronstein in 1879, was a far-sighted prophet who warned of the Holocaust and was an eloquent critic of Stalinism until 1940, when Stalin had him murdered. This succinct, entirely sympathetic biography, with many shrewdly chosen quotations, is visualised photographically and in Phil Evan's witty cartoons.