The Age of Extremes: A History of the World 1914-1991

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The Age of Extremes: A History of the World 1914-1991

4.12 of 5 stars 4.12 · rating details · 1,483 ratings · 87 reviews

Dividing the century into the Age of Catastrophe, 1914-1950, the Golden Age, 1950-1973, and the Landslide, 1973-1991, Hobsbawm marshals a vast array of data into a volume of unparalleled inclusiveness, vibrancy, and insight, a work that ranks with his classics The Age of Empire and The Age of Revolution. Includes 32 pages of photos.

Paperback, 672 pages

Published February 13th 1996 by Vintage (first published 1994)

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Dec 04, 2011 Kevin rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-non-fiction, the-good

I remember, a long time ago I read this when it was first published in 1994 - I was a social history student at Swansea Uni - and my lecturer told me this book was a 'departure for Hobsbawm'. I never quite or fully understood what she meant back all those years ago. My second re-read, and I still do not understand what she really meant, although being older and allegedly more wiser, I still fail to fully grasp her meaning. However, what I think she meant was Eric Hobsbawms stance on Soviet Russi...more I remember, a long time ago I read this when it was first published in 1994 - I was a social history student at Swansea Uni - and my lecturer told me this book was a 'departure for Hobsbawm'. I never quite or fully understood what she meant back all those years ago. My second re-read, and I still do not understand what she really meant, although being older and allegedly more wiser, I still fail to fully grasp her meaning. However, what I think she meant was Eric Hobsbawms stance on Soviet Russia; he more or less takes strips from the Eastern Bloc and what it lead to, and what was most interesting believes that an experiment like it will never happen again. This is coming from a famous Marxist historian whom was a Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) member. He takes an objective stance on the state-planned economies of the Soviet Bloc, and whilst Soviet Russia was one of the countries that had escaped the stock market collapse of 1929 and the Great Depression that followed it due to its state-run five year plans that saw Russia become an industrial power house, it didn't stop the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the disintegration of Soviet Russia between 1989 and 1991, where this book ends.

It is an aptly titled book. The Twentieth Century, or at least starting from 1914 through to 1991 (hence why it is called 'short') was probably the most bloodiest but also the most technically advanced century ever. Two massive global conflicts, a major economic collapse during the inter war years, the rise of political extremes that sparked off the second world conflict, a period of economic growth after the second world war that has never been equaled, the 1960s counter-culture wave, and the collapse of the Soviet Bloc characterises these years. Eric Hobsbawm writes in a manner that is not too academic or dry, but this book is packed full of interesting researched facts and analyses, and the chapters on the arts, stemming from the early 20thC (avant-garde) right through to 'modern-art' (however we interpret it today) were really insightful. Both art forms are tied into the eras they were developed in, more or less being mirrors of the society that they inhabited.

The final chapter I found really hit a chord that resonated loudly. Eric Hobsbawm explains the collapse of the 'golden years', the years following WW2 that saw unprecedented economic growth and prosperity, from the 1970s onwards that never saw a return to the growth on the same scale. At the time he finishes his study in 1991, the world looked quite bleak even though the collapse of the Soviet Union saw a 'victory' for free market economies and the stagnation of state planned ones. He becomes quite prophetical and also quite depressed (if that is the correct world to use) about the future; he more or less predicted our current economic woes - that we have hit another, quite severe, slump, something inherent in free market economies he claims. I would like to read what Eric Hobsbawm would make of our current world situation, and seeing as this historian is still alive (according to wikipedia he is an impressive 94 years old), and has lived through this century that he writes about would be more than interesting. Great history.

(less)

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Nov 17, 2011 Duesterwald-Online rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: sachbuch-fachliteratur

Inhalt:
Eric Hobsbawm teilt sein Werk in drei Teile: das Katastrophenzeitalter, das goldene Zeitalter und schließlich der Erdrutsch.
Er erklärt, wie es zum Ersten und zum Zweiten Weltkrieg kam, berichtet vom darauf folgenden Kalten Krieg und auch dem Wirtschaftswunder. Und er zeigt, wieso heute die Länder so sind, wie sie sind.

Meinung:
Jeder kennt die Standardwerke, die es vor allem über den Zweiten Weltkrieg gibt. Oft sind es zähe Sachbücher zu dem Thema, die oftmals zu viel Information in unendli...more

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May 31, 2009 Weg! is currently reading it · review of another edition

The business of historians, Hobsbawm reminds us, is to remember what others forget, a task carrying much more weight in a world where contemporary experience is persistently present and lacking any organic relation (goodreads, hello?) to the public past of our times.

This book, as proof of the above point, is my first and urgently needed reading of a concise history of the Twentieth Century. Hobsbawm's Maxist position is most obviously apparent not from the balance of his arguments, which strike...more

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Dec 17, 2010 Alan added it

My favourite historian, and he's not even a military one! Eric Hobsbawm writes extraordinarily well, his historical insight is second to none and his books are always very readable for the layman. Even though he confesses that the 20th century isn't really his area of expertise, The Age of Extremes is a tour de force.

Every session that I read this book, he comes up with some new insight or method of expressing his view that is witty, pertinent and just plain brilliant. I particularly like: ‎"Nev...more

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Oct 30, 2009 Matt Allen rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: history

I read this with a ton of hope: I heard this guy was a british national treasure and one of the most famous living historians. But the only thing I took from the book was his (I think accurate) theory that the 20th century was "short" and could be described as the period between the start of WWI and the end of the cold war. The rest of it was pretty forgettable. I think he's one of those historians that only makes sense if you've already spent a lifetime reading history and know the landscape pr...more

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Mar 24, 2013 Pratinav Anil rated it 5 of 5 stars

Hobsbawm introduced me to the 19th Century - and no one could have a done a better job than him. This book is his ambitious take on the 20th century - a macro-history of sorts, that looks at structural paradigms, social groups, class struggles, the collective psyche of generations etc. While the book doesn't focus much politics, leaders and events (treaties, wars - in terms of dates, that is), it presents a picture of the people of the century with great success. Its a history of the people, not...more

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Jan 30, 2011 Marcio Rafael Maciel rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: história, i-own, irbr-cacd

Uma excelente análise do "breve séc. XX". O livro é bom tanto para historiadores quanto leigos interessados no tema. O autor destila eruditismo em uma linguagem completamente acessível e envolvente. Apesar de marxista convicto, neste livro, esse viés fica menos explícito do que em suas outras obras, facilitando o acesso ao texto pelos interessados.

O livro fala das guerras, das lutas sociais, transformações culturais, políticas, futebol, enfim, com segue fazer um apanhado bem completo do período...more

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Dec 14, 2011 Alexandra added it

Shelves: school, history

I'm not giving this book a rating for a couple of reasons: I didn't read the whole lot, and it wasn't what I was hoping for.

I was hoping for a book to give me a good overview of the bits of the 20th century I need to teach my yr11 course. It didn't do that; not that much on WW1, and little on the early part of the Cold War, although some interesting and useful comments on both. It said nothing about the suffragette movement, which was disappointing, although I guess it didn't fit into his theme...more

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Apr 02, 2012 Sarah rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: history

There is an awful lot to chew on here: every paragraph requires a tome behind it (and two historical novels to explore the social implications) and inevitably, in a work that covers everything that happened 1914 to 1991 (including in arts, science, technology, social issues) in 580 dense pages, there are things my little brain struggles to process. Hobsbawm is amazing and not least for having experienced so much of this (the western bits at least) himself - hearing Castro in full flow, meeting T...more

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Jul 18, 2012 Chris rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

After reading Hobsbawm's excellent trilogy on political-economic history of the "long 19th Century" (1789-1914), this volume - the logical coda to that trilogy - is an obvious letdown. To be clear, it has nothing to do with the arguments presented in this book. That the early 20th Century was a catastrophic breakdown of the Western European (and increasingly North American) bourgeois order; that the "Golden Age" (1945-early 70s) of worldwide growth under a relatively stable (if, from the public...more After reading Hobsbawm's excellent trilogy on political-economic history of the "long 19th Century" (1789-1914), this volume - the logical coda to that trilogy - is an obvious letdown. To be clear, it has nothing to do with the arguments presented in this book. That the early 20th Century was a catastrophic breakdown of the Western European (and increasingly North American) bourgeois order; that the "Golden Age" (1945-early 70s) of worldwide growth under a relatively stable (if, from the public point of view, incredibly terrifying) bi-polar Cold War order came as the result of post-war governments trying to prevent the catastrophes of the previous decades but only papering over the fissures which caused them; and that after 1970, these fissures reappeared and were increasingly globalized are theses that students of the 20th Century should take seriously.

Where the book falls down is the intimacy Hobsbawm has with these events - this is the history of his times. He, of course, acknowledges this up front, but it does not mitigate the problem. The subtext throughout this tome is Hobsbawm desperately wanting the catastrophic early part of the century to have been worth something, that the tens of millions of people who lost their lives for communism, for anti-fascism, for colonial liberation didn't die in vain - an understandable reaction to anyone of the generation who lived through these traumas. But the way this manifests itself in the text is a major distraction. It clouds Hobsbawm's historical judgement, and he posits historical openings or counterfactuals that didn't really exist, that, in fact, run counter to the rest of the historical evidence he musters. A case in point: Hobsbawm is rightly dismissive of the (consistently inconsistent) theoretical and political arguments used by Stalin to justify his brutality in the 1930s; pages later, however, he takes at face value Stalin's claim to wanting to continue the United Front policies of WWII (with closer cooperation and integration with the West and a reformed communism in the East) into the post-war era. He repeats this assessment of a tyrannical domestic realpolitik but naively idealistic international policy with Mao. Hobsbawm's claims that a better, more cooperative world was possible because of opportunities missed flies in the face of the brutality he acknowledges, and it grates every single time.

The distractions aside, this isn't a bad overview of the 20th Century. But the arguments presented in these book could've been better made, I think, by someone who doesn't carry Hobsbawm's historical baggage. If you're going to invest the time in Hobsbawm, stick with the writings in his wheelhouse on the 19th Century.(less)

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Chris Do you know what makes me outraged, David? It's a 20-something from Indiana who thinks that he can judge what's in everyone else's heart. Who thinks h...more
Jun 22, 2012 09:35pm

David I haven't judged anyone's heart nor have I judged an octogenarian's life. Nor is my negative opinion of Hobsbawm's intellectual activism based just on...more I haven't judged anyone's heart nor have I judged an octogenarian's life. Nor is my negative opinion of Hobsbawm's intellectual activism based just on this one quote. (This is just a crystallization of his illiberal political philosophy.) But I understand why you want to personalize everything, choosing not to see a difference between a person and the ideas they choose to advocate. I also understand why you would commit the logical fallacy of an ad hominem argument against me -- like with when you misread my comment earlier, you're reacting in an emotional way as I identify the contradictions in your political theology. What does me being born in Indiana have to do with the validity of my ideas? I was still born in Indiana back in 2006 when I made the same kinds of arguments you make now. (And even did the same argumentative style -- the way you stack a bunch of arguments and questions and attacks on top of each other instead of focusing on one subject so we can have a coherent exchange.)

I think you're having another emotional moment like when you thought I called you a Stalinist. Maybe you should calm down so we can get the discussion back on track so we can articulate a level of clarity about the root of our disagreements.

You avoided answering my question: "Do you think it's evil to advocate for the legalization of child prostitution?"

Yes, I do choose to see the world in terms of good and evil. I think since we live in a world of grays we need to work hard to find the varying shades and find where there's more black than white. That's the root change in my world view since leaving college. I've come to understand the depths of human evil -- and the price people can pay for ignoring it. This change that I've gone through is the standard one. Irving Kristol described it as "when a liberal gets mugged by reality."

"On the BBC2's Late Show in 1994, while being interviewed about the fall of the Berlin Wall, five years earlier, he defended 'what had to be done'. Interviewer Michael Ignatieff asked: 'What (your view) comes down to is that, had the radiant tomorrow actually been created, the loss of 15-20million people might have been justified?'
Hobsbawm's unhesitating answer was a single word: 'Yes.'"

You call this answer "outrageous and wrong." I call it evil.

You say of individuals protesting on behalf of child sex slavery, "Yes, they're idiots." And I say, No, they're not being stupid, they're embracing evil ideas. Just as the very intelligent, very gifted intellectual Eric Hobsbawm spent his life promoting evil ideas.

I use the word "evil" not out of emotionalism or being brainwashed but through careful reasoning and an engagement with the central philosophical foundations of Western Civilization. If we do not focus on seeing and confronting evil then we will be the ones victimized by it.

So please tell me Chris, if these acts and ideas are not evil, then what are? How do you use the word "evil" or do you at all?(less)
Jun 23, 2012 06:55am

Dec 04, 2011 David rated it 5 of 5 stars

Born in 1917 and coming of age as a young communist (and a Jewish one at that) in 1930s Germany as Hitler came to power, the British Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm - by professional training a historian of the 19th century - here turns his keen analytic eye to the history of his own time. Covering the period of “the short twentieth century”, Age of Extremes explores the period from the start of World War I in 1914 to the sudden and total implosion of the Communist “second world” between 1989 an...more

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Nov 12, 2011 Zachary Moore rated it 4 of 5 stars

A good socio-political account of the 20th century, this work is ultimately undermined by the lack of a coherent economic theory. Although the success or failure of economic systems provides the primary method of periodization in the book, Hobsbawm lacks any theoretical device to illustrate why the world economy should ever grow, contract or do anything else, aside from falling back on the notion of Kondratieff waves.

The problem with the Kondratieff wave theory however is that is essentially ant...more

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Apr 23, 2011 Bhaskar Sunkara rated it 5 of 5 stars

a few qualms:

1) gross overstatement of the role of the Soviet Union "threat" in the creation of the Western welfare state... goes hand-in-hand with a tendency to see the Left as a historic force embodied by the Soviet Union, rather than the product of internal contradictions within capitalist societies. In other words, the welfare state emerged, in large part, out of concessions wrung out by workers.

2) are we really living in the landside? the past decades have seen perhaps the greatest proletar...more

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Nov 02, 2012 Morticia Adams rated it 4 of 5 stars

I've been reading this book since the beginning of this year and I'm still only half way through it because I need to take frequent breaks. Some of it is very interesting, but generally I'm finding it goes into too much detail about everything, and I'm constantly losing the bigger picture, unlike the author, who seems to be able to synthesise absolutely everything into his vision. I think the trouble is that Professor Hobsbawm is intellectually miles ahead of most other people, but rather charmi...more

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Aug 11, 2008 Paul rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I found this book extremely difficult to read. Hobsbawm was born in Egypt to Viennese parents who spoke English in the home, and his syntax seems to have been permanently ruined by the experience. For example, what are we to make of this sentance? For if divorce, illegitimate, births and the rise of the single-parent (i.e. overwhelmingly the single-mother) household indicated a crisis in the relation between the sexes, the rise of a specific, and extraordinarily powerful youth culture indicated...more

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Jun 06, 2007 Adam rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Finley, Brandon

I'm not quite done with it yet (150 or so pages left) so take my review with a grain of salt. Mr. Hobsbawm's analysis of the "Short Twentieth Century" does, I think, bear up. At no point in the book does he fail to mention his own biases or does he take a particular side. Mr. Hobsbawm, however, does not pull any punches in his criticism of Western (US) Imperialism up to and through the 80s. The text is well sourced and easily read even if the style is academic and not polemic. One negative, and...more

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Dec 04, 2009 Abailart rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: history

Reading this again to contextualise reading on culture from Arnold through Leavis to literary theory with a particular interest in working class culture (looking too at Rose's 'Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes'). As well as the history, maybe more so, I am seeking to bring more sharply into focus my understanding of the refractive processes by which working class history is manufactured.
Hobsbawm is great to read. A certain debunking Attic wit, frequent references to his own perso...more

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Jul 26, 2011 H Wesselius added it

A well written social history by an old school Labour/Marxist historian. His essays on fascism, third world revolution, communism alone are worth the read. His disdain for Friedman economics as theology is both amusing and correct. He correctly notes the Golden Era to be the result of a compromise between capitalism and labor abandoned in 1973 which created the Crisis Decades of the end of the century. And he notes the irony that the socialist countries integrated themselves to the west at preci...more

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Aug 02, 2011 Malcolm rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: history-global

Hobsbawm is one of the great historians, and this analysis of the short twentieth century – building on his three volume history of the long nineteenth century – is essential reading for an understanding of the big picture of contemporary history – with its argument that the period c1914 to 1945 was one long European war, that one of the great European social changes of the 20th century was the demise of the peasantry, and other counterintuitive arguments that unsettle the simplicity of the rece...more

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Mar 04, 2009 Wordsmanifest rated it 5 of 5 stars

the chapters unfurl; the scope of this book is painfully good to explore. even when hobsbawn zeroes in on case studies, he chases down each detail so thoroughly that the causes and effects branch out to include the entire planet. i've only been reading this out of its series of four, but i'm going to do the whole set. too bad i've been falling asleep reading this one. fml

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Feb 28, 2010 mahatma rated it 4 of 5 stars

saya barusan ambil kembali buku ini dari rak simpan.
hobsbawm adalah pencerita yang mengesankan: terkesan maksain interpretasinya sendiri tapi cerita yang dibangunnya bisa kita maklumi. itulah pandangan dia. artinya, masih tersisa ruang bagi orang lain untuk menuliskan interpretasinya sendiri.

dia menyebut abad ke-20 sebagai abad yang singkat.
singkat dan karenanya unik. paling tidak, menurut dia, ada 3 hal yang membuat rentang waktu seabad itu begitu unik dibandingkan dengan rentang abad yang lewa...more

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Dec 27, 2012 Nava rated it 4 of 5 stars

A thorough analysis of our modern history, that helped plug a few of the holes in my school education, which ended somewhere after the second world war (although some aspects of history were briefly mentioned.) There wasn't as much about the far east as I would have liked, but it is a global analysis. It is not however a complete recount, and in some places where I do not have the basis I still don't.
Unfortunately the writing style was inaccessible to me. His sentences can span 6 lines, sometime...more

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Nov 09, 2012 Sayantan rated it 4 of 5 stars

not a "standard" history book, rather the author's take of this age gone by. Best read it if you have a good idea of the events of this period. The author does not go into the events, rather he concentrates on their causes and impacts. A good read, if you have done your homework

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Jul 22, 2011 Yann rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: histoire, angleterre, politique

Après un long dix-neuvième siècle en trois volumes, un court XXème en un volume. J'ai bien apprécié le découpage par thématiques plutôt qu'une simple chronologie, mais ces différents chapitres sont de qualité inégale.

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Aug 19, 2009 Justin Evans rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: history-etc

A great appendix to Hobsbawm's history of the long nineteenth century (French Revolution to WWI), and a pretty decent place to start for 20th century history I would say. No complaints. And i'm a real complainer.

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Apr 04, 2013 Will rated it 3 of 5 stars

"For a large part of the Short Twentieth Century, Soviet communism claimed to be an alternative and superior system to capitalism, and one destined by history to triumph over it. For much of this period even many of those who rejected its claims to superiority were far from convinced that it might not triumph. And - with the significant exception of the years from 1933 to 1945, the international politics of the entire Short Twentieth Century since the October revolution can best be understood as...more

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May 10, 2013 Alexandru Rauta added it

Interesting modelling of the historic narrative, mentions many iconic figures of the (radical) left, sometimes annoying when preaching the world revolution and finding all sorts of excuses for USSR

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Aug 14, 2011 Pili rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Erselente libro! (escribo mal a propósito)

Me lo hicieron leer en la U y lo tengo en fotocopias anilladas, porque estaba dentro de los libros para entrar a la Academia Diplomática (pendiente)

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Feb 07, 2011 Chelsea Szendi rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: history-beyond-japan

The first time I read this, I was a fussy new grad student, given to pick on anything. On second reading, this book simply amazes me. Bedtime reading for the kids.

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May 12, 2012 Claire-louise Tuthill rated it 5 of 5 stars

Some really great ideas in this book, so full of fascinating information. Amazing to see how many extremes our world has gone through in the 20th century.

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About Eric J. Hobsbawm

also published as:
E.J. Hobsbawm
Eric Hobsbawm

Eric Hobsbawm, a self-confessed "unrepentant communist" was professor emeritus of economic and social history of the University of London at Birkbeck. He has written many acclaimed historical works, including a trilogy on the nineteenth-century; The Age of Revolution, The Age of Capital, and The Age of Empire and is the author of The Age of Extremes: Th...more

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