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The Age of Extremes

1914-1991

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The Age of Extremes

By: Eric Hobsbawm
Narrated by: Hugh Kermode
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About this listen

The Age of Extremes is eminent historian Eric Hobsbawm's personal vision of the 20th century. Remarkable in its scope, and breathtaking in its depth of knowledge, this immensely rewarding book reviews the uniquely destructive and creative nature of the troubled 20th century and makes challenging predicitions for the future.

©1994 Eric Hobsbawm (P)2020 Hachette Audio UK 20th Century Europe Modern Socialism Capitalism Imperialism Russia Interwar Period Soviet Union Latin America War Middle Ages Africa Taxation Middle East Self-Determination China
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Great summary of the XX century. It warns for the danger of the following old ways.

Wise analysis.

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after a good 3 volumes on Western history, I braced myself for a sharp right wing turn with Hobsbawm's red baiting title, age of extremes (connoting horseshoe theory). I was really shocked here how far from the measured scholarship in his previous 3 books he had descended here. most of this trite history reads like a typical Eurocentric liberal whitewashing of the western capitalist powers role in provoking WW2 and horrific war crimes and imperialism in attempting to destroy communism and 3rd world independence movements.

hobsbawm frequently relies on one sided cold war propaganda and even personal anecdotes, ignoring the available soviet archives and many other historical sources in forming his bitter invective against the first successful workers state in history which got humanity into space and transformed a brutal feudal monarchy into a global scientific superpower, offering its citizens universal healthcare, education, affordable housing and guaranteed employment. Such historic advances are completely absent in hobsbawms account, preferring casual slander of its leaders to a detailed class or economic analysis.

China's successful communist revolution led by Mao drew similar but scanty sketched caricatures of a white supremacist, orientalist nature, describing Mao as a second rate poet and sly demagogue who never read Marx (did he even read On Contradiction?). Steer clear of this pseudo left handmaiden of western empire.

anti communist horseshoe theory drivel

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