Why read The Age of Empire?

Book cover of The Age of Empire: 1875-1914

Book description

Erica Hobsbawm discusses the evolution of European economics, politics, arts, sciences, and cultural life from the height of the industrial revolution to the First World War. Hobsbawm combines vast erudition with a graceful prose style to re-create the epoch that laid the basis for the twentieth century.

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Age of Empire as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Philip B. Minehan

Author

The Age of Empire is a momentous history of Europe and the world in the era that contained the immediate origins and dynamics that led into World War One, but was also crucial in shaping world history to this day.

At the beginning of the book, Hobsbawm offers a grand-scale perspective on the ‘contradictions of liberal bourgeois society in the age of empire’, which, for me, is among the most helpful and insightful big – and dialectical – ideas about modern history.

In the form of ‘the contradictions of neoliberal bourgeois society’, I went so far as to update and…

From Philip's list on modern world history and politics.