Age of Extremes : The Short Twentieth Century 1914-1991 |
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E.J. Hobsbawm
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Pages: 627 (Paperback)
ISBN: 0349106711
Pub: Abacus
Pub date: 1995-10-12
Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 4273
Reader Reviews:
erudite - but unreadable (0/0 people found this helpful)
The research, understanding & in depth knowledge is amazing. To genuinely understand & cram so much into one paperback deserves so much more than the 2 stars I have given.
Unfortunately the book is unreadable - I gave up after 100 or so pages (and Im sorry cos I know Ive missed out on so much knowledge). Sentences are up to half a page long, convoluted, strewn with double negatives. Paragraphs take up more than a page. Its impossible to read without getting lost or trying to double read every section.
Bottom line: Author is brilliant without question. Publisher must and should realise that brilliance is nothing without communication - and this book doesnt communicate.
Either too much or too little for readability (0/1 people found this helpful)
Whatever its merits, and they are undoubtedly many, for someone who knows little history this book would, most charitably, not be a great place to start - so this review is really intended for those looking to get (or refresh) the gist of 20C history with the minimum reading.
While Hobsbawm manages to get nearly everything in, he does so at the expense of readability. He can write very engagingly, but here he seems to have just too much material to impose his charm on - it would have been better as a shorter, more focused, argument or alternatively it might have been better as 2 or 3 books.
Hobsbawm was a Marxist who, like so many others, seemed to be disorientated by the fall of the Soviet union - he became a 'Eurocommunist', a near-meaningless euphemism for a fashion amongst lefties for post-modernist waffle (not Hobsbawm, thankfully) and accommodation with capitalism. He was part of the the 'Marxism Today' clique that had strong links with the milieu that gave us New Labour. Recently he seems to have found his bearings again, and repented some of the positions he supported in the 90s, but his doubts show in this work - it lacks the force of conviction. But at least his apostasy didn't stretch to an outright conversion to Thatcherism and now neoliberalism like another one-time lefty writer Paul Johnson; he gives a reasonably balanced account; too balanced! - his impartial, third-person precis of everything and anything makes for a read about as entertaining as a telephone directory.
Paul Johnson's 'Modern times' (up to maybe 1960 and no further ,and providing you are aware of his bias, especially in his introduction) is a much more serviceable quick overview - they say nobody is more fanatical than a convert, and Johnson's zeal for Thatcherism is embarrassing in his account of post 1955 so I recommend stopping at the era of decolonialisation - the'Bandung generation'is quite a handy chapter - and using Hobsbawm for anything later, and the earlier part of Hobsbawm for a check and further details. Johnson is a compelling and entertaining writer (like Schama often because he doesn't let the truth get in the way of a good story, but pre-1955 he is not too bad here, except of course for downplaying US aggression, which strangely Hobsbawm does too); Hobsbawm is more scrupulous but whatever gift he has for storytelling (and I usually find that considerable) is missing from 'the Age of Extremes
A big omission in Hobsbawm's work is that the USA, the most powerful and influential nation of the 20th century, does not get nearly enough attention, maybe because it's too big a story. So I recommend Hugh Brogan's Penguin (one-time Longman) History of the USA - very readable and widely praised, notably by Gore Vidal for Brogan's account of the origins of the Vietnam war. I also recommend Noam Chomsky's 'World Orders Old and New' and (especially) Michael Parenti's 'Blackshirts and Reds' to give you a correct perspective on all the above and the bare minimum necessary grasp of modern times.
But I suspect most people will buy Age of Extremes because of its reputation, read a bit of it, and mean to finish it but never seem to get around to picking it up again. I did read about 4/5ths of it. I've been meaning to finish it for 5 years (and I've read effortlessly many books covering parts of the picture in that time), so as I said I recommend starting Age of Extremes post c1955 and using Johnson(with one eye open) for the earlier period, and using the rest of Age of Extremes for a reference or second opinion, and using Parenti and Chomsky as a last word.
For those who are already well familiar with the gist of 20C history, the most useful part of Age of Extremes may be Hobsbawm's sources and lists of books for further reading.
Either too much or too little for readability (1/1 people found this helpful)
Whatever its merits, and they are undoubtedly many, for someone who knows little history this book would, most charitably, not be a great place to start - so this review is really intended for those looking to get (or refresh) the gist of 20C history with the minimum reading.
While Hobsbawm manages to get nearly everything in, he does so at the expense of readability. He can write very engagingly, but here he seems to have just too much material to impose his charm on - it would have been better as a shorter, more focused, argument or alternatively it might have been better as 2 or 3 books.
Hobsbawm was a Marxist who, like so many others, seemed to be disorientated by the fall of the Soviet union - he became a 'Eurocommunist', a near-meaningless euphemism for a fashion amongst lefties for post-modernist waffle (not Hobsbawm, thankfully) and accommodation with capitalism. He was part of the the 'Marxism Today' clique that had strong links with the milieu that gave us New Labour. Recently he seems to have found his bearings again, and repented some of the positions he supported in the 90s, but his doubts show in this work - it lacks the force of conviction. But at least his apostasy didn't stretch to an outright conversion to Thatcherism and now neoliberalism like another one-time lefty writer Paul Johnson; he gives a reasonably balanced account; too balanced! - his impartial, third-person precis of everything and anything makes for a read about as entertaining as a telephone directory.
Paul Johnson's 'Modern times' (up to maybe 1960 and no further ,and providing you are aware of his bias, especially in his introduction) is a much more serviceable quick overview - they say nobody is more fanatical than a convert, and Johnson's zeal for Thatcherism is embarrassing in his account of post 1955 so I recommend stopping at the era of decolonialisation - the'Bandung generation'is quite a handy chapter - and using Hobsbawm for anything later, and the earlier part of Hobsbawm for a check and further details. Johnson is a compelling and entertaining writer (like Schama often because he doesn't let the truth get in the way of a good story, but pre-1955 he is not too bad here, except of course for downplaying US aggression, which strangely Hobsbawm does too); Hobsbawm is more scrupulous but whatever gift he has for storytelling (and I usually find that considerable) is missing from 'the Age of Extremes
A big omission in Hobsbawm's work is that the USA, the most powerful and influential nation of the 20th century, does not get nearly enough attention, maybe because it's too big a story. So I recommend Hugh Brogan's Penguin (one-time Longman) History of the USA - very readable and widely praised, notably by Gore Vidal for Brogan's account of the origins of the Vietnam war. I also recommend Noam Chomsky's 'World Orders Old and New' and (especially) Michael Parenti's 'Blackshirts and Reds' to give you a correct perspective on all the above and the bare minimum necessary grasp of modern times.
But I suspect most people will buy Age of Extremes because of its reputation, read a bit of it, and mean to finish it but never seem to get around to picking it up again. I did read about 4/5ths of it. I've been meaning to finish it for 5 years (and I've read effortlessly many books covering parts of the picture in that time), so as I said I recommend starting Age of Extremes post c1955 and using Johnson(with one eye open) for the earlier period, and using the rest of Age of Extremes for a reference or second opinion, and using Parenti and Chomsky as a last word.
For those who are already well familiar with the gist of 20C history, the most useful part of Age of Extremes may be Hobsbawm's sources and lists of books for further reading.
Brilliant History writing (1/7 people found this helpful)
I was supposed to read this during the first term of my history degree. Instead I spent this time getting drunk and trying to lure similarly wasted girls into my grotty student bed. While I don't regret my course of actions, when I did get round to reading this, a year after I had already received my second first class honours in modern history, I realised I had been missing a great deal. Broad, authoritative and constantly interesting, this is a must for history students and non-history students alike.
unreadable marxist version of history (10/35 people found this helpful)
This is a difficult book to read if you want a straightforward honest account and interpretation of history as relating of history is somewhat schizophrenic, jumping around between events non-chronologically, and tightly woven with interpretation written through the myopic lens of the author's Marxist opinions, making it hard to distingush between fact and fiction.
Because of this it was useless as a source for essays I had to write at university, despite being the recommended course book by our (Marxist) lecturer.
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Keywords
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