Synopses & Reviews
On the Edge of the New Century is the sequel to Eric Hobsbawm’s The Age of Extremes, a book of serious and challenging historical analysis that became a worldwide bestseller, now in paperback. Hobsbawm’s latest book continues his “magisterial” (The New York Times Book Review) analysis of the twentieth century, and asks crucial questions about our inheritance from a century of conflict and its meaning for our future.
Looking back over the last decade, Hobsbawm finds the distinction between internal and international conflicts and between the state of war and the state of peace disappearing as the crisis of the multiethnic state deepens and nations emerge from colonialism and nuclear terror. He assesses the impact that a popular global culture has had on every aspect of life, from happiness and social hierarchy to nutrition and the environment.
Review
"Enthusiastically recommended. Hobsbawm speaks from a base of wisdom that easily draws attention."
Library Journal"Hobsbawms elegant analysis brings a century of incredible change into some semblance of frame and focus, even as it prods us to ask why we study the information we call history." Kirkus Reviews
About the Author
Eric Hobsbawm was born in Alexandria in 1917 and educated in Austria, Germany, and England. He taught at Birkbeck College, the University of London, and the New School for Social Research in New York. He is the author of
The Age of Revolution,
The Age of Capital,
The Age of Empire, and
The Age of Extremes, and The New Press has published his books
On History,
Uncommon People,
Industry and Empire,
Bandits,
On the Edge of the New Century,
Revolutionaries, his memoir
Interesting Times,
On Empire, and
Fractured Times. Eric Hobsbawm died in 2012.