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An interesting review / commentary on that book, and his worldview, by someone with a rather different one: https://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2012/10/brad-delong-
by iguy 6y ago
An interesting review / commentary on that book, and his worldview, by someone with a rather different one:
https://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2012/10/brad-delong-eric-hobsbawms-age-of-extremes-hoisted-from-the-archives.html https://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2012/10/brad-delong-eric-hobs...
"He is writing for readers who take the central theme of twentieth century history to be the tragical-heroic course of World Communism."
- peisistratos 6y agoLooking at the examples Delong gave 25 years ago, history has been much kinder to Hobsbawm's bleak vision than Delong's. > What has happened in the past decade that has so darkened his vision of our human future? > The past decade has seen good news along a number of important dimensions: The environment is in better shape: the clean-up of the first world continues; the clean-up of the ex-Communist world has begun; and the third world is more aware of environmental degradation. Progress has been made in creating the international climate to guard against ozone depletion and global warming.
- iguy 6y agoIf all you take is bleakness, then perhaps. But Hobsbawm's bleakness is more specific, it's about the demise of actually existing Communism as a pole of the world order. And I would say that putting that anywhere near the top of your list of world events to feel sad about seems even stranger now than in 1995.