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Title: Interesting Times : A Twentieth-Century Life by ERIC HOBSBAWM ISBN: 0-375-42234-X Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 12 August, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (5 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Interesting but humourless
Comment: Eric Hobsbawn has led a fascinating life and has added enormously to the understanding of the last two centuries withhis brilliant historical mind.
I enjoyed reading his autobiography, but I found it to be almost humourless and astonishingly free of anecdote. He comes across as an earnest devotee of communism. His wrestling with the failure of communism - both morally and materially - is one of the most engaging features of the book. But I wanted to know the person and person does not seem to appear at all. In truth, it is an extended essay on his life and times, but very little else.
Rating: 5
Summary: Interesting and - at least personally - lucky times
Comment: Who ever is interested in newer history, in extensive portraits of European (and partly non-European) countries or single landscapes and towns (like Cambrigde) and in cultures in their different expressions can raise a treasure here.
Already the chapters about the France and Italy of the decades between 1930 and 1995 (the author actually experienced this period of time personally) are wonderful, small books for itself. Written excellently this book can easily be read and is never superficial. A fine consumption perhaps like the red wine to a good meal. Unfortunately, it is also the slightly melancholy look back to the times that more and more seem to have been the golden age of the last centuries. In terms of Hobsbawm who simplifies consciously it were the times when the rich ones had to fear the poor ones. Hobsbawm considers his own life as an unusual and not at all foreseeable case of luck. It is generous that he invides us to take part in his review of interesting and personally lucky times.
It is one of the best books that I know. I would like to always have a stack to the hand - for giving away a copy to friends.
Rating: 4
Summary: Interesting Times...At Least to a Degree
Comment: I approached Eric's Hobsbawm's autobiography with some relish. His background is truly fascinating and his views often contrary to the mainstream. His long term membership of the British Communist Party certainly places him within a very small group by any measure.
However, I must admit that I was often disappointed in Hobsbawm's work. There were large sections of pontificating rather than him outlining the so-called interesting times in which he lived. And let there be on mistake, Hobsbawm did live in interesting times. He was born in the year of the Russian Revolution to an Austrian mother and British father who were both Jews in Vienna during the dying days of the Hapsburg Empire. His early education was in Vienna while his later education was in Britain where he ultimately went on to study at Cambridge. Throughout his life, he travelled widely and truly met many interesting people. Thus, my only concern with his book is that his interesting life can sometimes play second fiddle to his opinions. But perhaps this is always the way with historians. They are here to interpret the world and not simply narrate.
Read Hobsbawm's work for an opinion on the twentieth century but not have expectations that you are going to read a tour de force of the century's movers and shakers.
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Title: The Age of Extremes : A History of the World, 1914-1991 by Eric Hobsbawm ISBN: 0679730052 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 13 February, 1996 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
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Title: Age of Empire: 1875-1914 by Eric Hobsbawm ISBN: 0679721754 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 23 April, 1989 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: On History by Eric J. Hobsbawm ISBN: 1565844688 Publisher: New Press Pub. Date: September, 1998 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: The Age of Capital : 1848-1875 by Eric Hobsbawm ISBN: 0679772545 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 26 November, 1996 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: The Age of Revolution: 1789-1848 by Eric Hobsbawm ISBN: 0679772537 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 26 November, 1996 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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