I would hesitate to call The Age of Extremes an overview of world events and human progress in what the author calls the "short twentieth century", because the word 'overview' might give the impression that this book touches on topics only in brief. But, if you're a history buff you will probably know that Hobsbawm was considered a great historian, a historian who knew and wrote about his subject well.
This book takes in world history between the years of 1914 - 1991 (from the start of World War 1 until the collapse of the Soviet bloc), and touches on political, cultural, and technological changes in that time, amongst other societal shifts and changes.
This book completes a quartet of books by Hobsbawm. The preceding three were The Age of Revolution: 1789 - 1848; The Age of Capital: 1848 - 1875; The Age of Empire: 1875 - 1914. This trilogy took in the period of history that Hobsbawm called the "long nineteenth century".
In the preface to The Age of Extremes, Hobsbawm tells readers that he had avoided writing about the twentieth century:
My own lifetime coincides with most of the period with which this book deals, and for most of it, from early teen-age to the present, I have been conscious of public affairs, that is to say I have accumulated views and prejudices about it as a contemporary rather than a scholar.
Eric Hobsbawm
Indeed, the author, a staunch Marxist, did suffer some criticism for his writings on this period because it was considered that his political views coloured his writing here. A number of reviews praised the book when it was originally published, but also suggested that Hobsbawm had been too harsh when writing about capitalism, and had allowed his communist convictions to influence too much of the book.
Still, considering that the book is now nearly two years shy of being thirty years old, it is quite unsettling to read certain passages:
We do not know where we are going. We only know that history has brought us to this point and - if readers share the argument of this book - why. However, one thing is plain. If humanity is to have a recognizable future, it cannot be by prolonging the past or present. If we try to build the third millenium on that basis, we shall fail.
The Age of Extremes, Eric Hobsbawm
In this mess of an age, when political leaders have been elected off the back of "making great again" and "taking back . . . ", it does feel as though that that - "prolonging the past or present" - is what many people want. And, in an age when it feels ridiculously easy to spread misinformation, when people can easily dismiss facts and science for articles and videos on their social media feeds (even if they are demonstrably false - the algorithms only show us what keeps us glued to our screens), I only know one thing for sure - we might be better off if we read more books! And, at least every now and then, it will be a great benefit to us if we read books like this, if only to remind ourselves of the "record of the crimes and follies of mankind", because then, maybe we'd be a little less likely to repeat some of our greatest mistakes.
You can purchase a copy of The Age of Extremes : 1914 - 1991 by Eric Hobsbawm here.
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