"In a world in which capitalism is presented as all that exists, the writer, speaker and agitator Rosa Luxemburg - murdered in Berlin by an unholy alliance of Right and Left in 1919 - is the last heroine of revolutionary socialism. Did Luxemburg, a contemporary of Lenin and Trotsky, offer a genuine alternative, a libertarian and democratic socialism that might have saved 20th century Europe from the scourges of depression, dictatorship and war? Or was she the lifelong victim of an illusion, a misreading of history that led her inexorably to a bloody death?" "This biography takes a fresh view, re-examining Luxemburg's tempestuous career and complex personal life, posing new questions about her politics and her dream of socialism."--BOOK JACKET.