Synopses & Reviews
Eric Hobsbawm has been widely acclaimed as one of the greatest living historians. Called a lyrical, pungent, and provocative memoir” by
Publishers Weekly,
Interesting Times offers a personal tour through what Hobsbawm terms the most extraordinary and terrible century in human history.” The book takes us from his birth in Alexandria, Egypt, and early schooling in Weimar Berlin to his student days as a Cambridge Red and Apostle at Kings College. Hobsbawm took E.M. Forster to hear Lenny Bruce, demonstrated with Bertrand Russell against nuclear arms, translated for Che Guevara in Havana, and inaugurated the modern history of banditry. With
Interesting Times, we see the making of one of the Lefts most important intellectuals, and the history of the twentieth century through the unforgiving eye of one of its most intensely engaged participants.
Review
"A remarkable autobiography… Mr. Hosbawm is of that generation of pioneering British cultural historians who united behind a simple belief History should not be written exclusively by and for the winners."—The New York Observer
"Hobsbawm portrays a turbulent world of frontier-crossing and meetings in back rooms in Berlin, of refugees and resistance fighters, Yugoslav partisans and death camp survivors, louche poets and secret agents courageous Communists and squalid betrayals."
—The Nation
"The popular people's historian who has influenced our understanding of the previous three centuries like no other."
—The Boston Globe
About the Author
Eric Hobsbawm was born in Alexandria in 1917 and educated in Austria, Germany and England. He taught at Birkbeck College, University of London, and then at the New School for Social Research in New York. In addition to
The Age of Revolution,
The Age of Capital,
The Age of Empire and
The Age of Extremes, his books include
Bandits,
Revolutionaries,
Uncommon People, and his memoir
Interesting Times. Eric Hobsbawm died in 2012.