"On 25 April 1974, a group of Portuguese soldiers overthrew one of the last Western European dictatorships of the 20th century, andpresented a political programme to the country based on three pillars: Democratise, Decolonise and Develop. What came to be known asthe Carnation Revolution started the ôthird wave of democratisationö(Samuel P. Huntington), which then reached Spain, Greece anddozens of other countries in Latin America, Asia and the Pacific,Africa and Eastern Europe. A year earlier, in April 1973, an essaythat José Medeiros Ferreira had sent from exile in Switzerland hadbeen presented to the 3rd Congress of the Democratic Opposition inAveiro. In this essay, which was received with suspicion by varioussectors of the Opposition, but which turned out to be prescient,the author stressed the need for the Armed Forces to be involved,firstly to put an end to the dictatorship and the war in theAfrican colonies, and then to support the implementation of a national action plan that would lead to decolonisation, democratisationand development.From the pen of Medeiros Ferreira-who, having returned from exile shortly after the Revolution, played an importantrole in opening up PortugalÆs young democracy to Europe and the world, later establishing himself as one of the most brilliantcontemporary history academics of his generation-his historical essayon the Carnation Revolution would be published in 1983, and isnow being offered to English readers. In this first pioneering anddaring attempt to record a history of the Portuguese Revolution,recognising the risks of the proximity of the text to the object ofstudy, as well as the proximity of the narrator to the historicalaction in which he was involved, the author made a redoubled effort of methodological rigour, through the selection, analysis andinterpretation of the available sources, bequeathing a work thatremains fundamental and intellectually challenging."