The author of this book, Igor Markovich Efimov (b. 1937), is a Russian writer, historian, philosopher, publicist who has lived in the USA since 1978, where he founded the Hermitage publishing house, which published works by Joseph Brodsky, Sergei Dovlatov, Vasily Aksenov , Andrei Bitov, is known to the Russian reader primarily for his novels “Archives of the Last Judgment”, “The Seventh Wife”, “Unfaithful” (the book reached the final of the largest Russian literary award “Big Book”), “The Novgorod Interpreter”, “The Emperor’s Bride” "and others. But, in addition, Igor Efimov wrote the fundamental philosophical works "Metapolitics" (1978) and "Practical Metaphysics" (1980), as well as the historical, political and socio-philosophical works "Kennedy, Oswald, Castro, Khrushchev" (1987), “The Shameful Secret of Inequality” (1999), and finally, for the first time published as a separate book, “Attila the Coming” - a large-scale study revealing the centuries-old origins and logic of the formation of modern international terrorism. The author considers this phenomenon as a result of a global civilizational conflict, the essence of which is irreconcilable contradictions between peoples at different stages of technological development, between historically different models of social structure. Acutely relevant in its problems, exceptionally rich in the scale and variety of factual material attracted by the author and very convincing in its conceptual conclusions, Igor Efimov’s new book, already in an abridged magazine version, caused a wide readership and critical response, instantly becoming an event in the space of intellectual prose of the current year.