The Age of Revolution

1789-1848

By: Eric Hobsbawm

Narrated by: Hugh Kermode

This magisterial volume follows the death of ancient traditions, the triumph of new classes, and the emergence of new technologies, sciences, and ideologies, with vast intellectual daring and aphoristic elegance.

Part of Eric Hobsbawm's epic four-volume history of the modern world, along with The Age of Capitalism, The Age of Empire, and The Age of Extremes.

©1962 The Trustees of the Eric Hobsbawm Literary Estate (P)2020 Tantor

Brilliant Materialist Interpretation

Hobsbawm's four-volume survey of European history from the French Revolution to the Fall of the Eastern Bloc is the premier materialist text of its generation. While giving solid notice to culture and politics, Hobsbawm's first interest is in the movements of economics and production, and how these tides shaped the broader history of the period.

Readable, engaging, fast-paced - an indispensable survey of the past two centuries.

Kermode's reading is solid - but the audio quality is poor. Tantor usually does better - how about a remix?

Still - five stars for this extraordinary book!

Amazing and well organized overview of the Age of Revolution

This book has become a classic, and it's easy to see why. It is not for the timid, but if you are down (as I was and am) to get a somewhat more detailed picture of the interconnections of politics, culture, and economic history of the age leading up to and pushing forward from the French (July) Revolution of 1789, you are in for an incredible ride. I took notes throughout (thanks, Tantor and Apple), and I will be going back to listen and read again--especially the unmissable chapter on Land, and the sections at the end pulling together Romanticism, the Enlightenment sciences and philology, the beginnings of theories about evolution and "race," and the oncoming era of socialist and democratic opposition and restructuring. Thanks so much to Eric Hobsbawm for this dense, informative and illuminating volume--looking forward to reading the rest of the series.

Interesting topic, this book is above my head

I read a lot of history and was looking for a book about the 1848 uprisings in Europe. A librarian recommended this book, and I was interested because it was copyrighted in 1961; plus the author was billed as a Marxist. I was expecting and got an unusual reading experience.

I had to slow the audio speed down to 0.8 or 0.9. Otherwise, the British accent and haste of the reader left me uncomprehending. In his dialect, the reader was competent.

Hobsbawm to me presents an extended essay, a commentary, a series of judgments about the events of the period he covers. I'd have preferred basic narrative. From what I've read about Hobsbawm, he was erudite, but to me he inserted as supporting arguments details of what happened in places around Europe and the world, assuming the reader already was quite familiar with the events referred to. Repeatedly, I felt he assumed the reader shared his broad and deep understanding of the events, so Hobsbawm's job was merely to connect them in his hypothesis. Over and over I felt puzzled, like I was missing the point.

I was confused repeatedly by terms the author doesn't define, terms that encompass a lot of complexity: Jacobin, liberal, bourgeois, illuminist, masonic.

The book would have benefited from biographical sketches of characters upon their appearance less cursory than what Hobsbawm provides.

Too often, the tone of the book approaches pedantic assertion, as though Hobsbawm's interpretations and hypotheses are self evident, such that he need not lower himself to my level to get me to understand the events, nor need he carefully explain his sweeping conclusions.

Perhaps the standards for writing of history has changed in 6 decades. Maybe I'm thick headed or out of my depth. But authors must meet the reader at the latter's level.

Nonetheless, the book is dynamic and compelling enough that I am interested in reading the other 3 in this series; and in remediating my deficient knowledge of the historical events.

To me, this book might be best for a reader already expert in the history of 1789-1848, which does not include me, even after listening and concurrently reading this book. And he says nothing about the uprisings of 1848, so I am still looking for a book about that year.