The Age of Revolution: 1789-1848 | 
 enlarge | Author: Eric Hobsbawm
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book
List Price: $15.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  16 reviews
Sales Rank: 63661
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1st Vintage Books ed
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 368
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 5.1 x 0.9
ISBN: 0679772537
Dewey Decimal Number: 940.27
EAN: 9780679772538
ASIN: 0679772537
Publication Date: November 26, 1996
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 11 more reviews...
History That Will Endure July 20, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Neither textbook nor narrative, Hobsbawm's classic is an interpretive essay whose many insights, expressed in memorable style, continue to stimulate and inspire. He abandoned Stalinism long ago, and his nuanced Marxism sympathizes with workers, peasants and rebels, which still seems to provoke some critics. Revolution is seen as an effective response to industrialization and political centralization, but this is no endorsement of the oppressive regimes which emerged from various revolutionary situations. In going beyond politics and economy to include culture, Hobsbawm (not coincidentally a dedicated music listener) points toward the current style of comprehensive history text. While the focus is on Europe, global comparisons and impacts receive coverage, though some prior knowledge is helpful. In 1962 social and cultural history---much of it inspired by his innovations---was just starting to transform history's scope. Since the original text is mostly unrevised, this is the main limitation to a book that will instruct and inform for many more years. Hobsbawm's "Interesting Times" tells his compelling life story with great vitality even in his ninth decade. The times are indeed interesting!
In a lesser writer's hands, a story this large would be overwhelming February 5, 2007
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
I have comparatively little to say about Eric Hobsbawm's history of the "dual revolutions" (the Industrial and the French), because I'm pretty sure I've only just finished the first act. Hobsbawm's goal seems to be to explain the world we live in now as a consequence of the dual revolutions, and he's spinning out his tale slowly and carefully. The first volume deals with the period from the start of the revolutions to the logical culmination in the revolutions of 1848. The way Hobsbawm tells it, the latter revolutions were in some sense inevitable given how the French and Industrial Revolutions played out. The lives of the poor in industrial cities grew intolerable; the bourgeoisie formed as a class and gained power; liberal politics, viewing men as atoms colliding in the marketplace, began its quest to be the only admissible political conception; the materialist worldview became the only socially acceptable one, powered by industry and by the rise of science; art -- in the person of a Ruskin, say -- violently rebelled; and the whole dance took its perfection of form in Karl Marx. (Says the man who has, embarrassingly, not yet read Marx.)
If I'm reading Hobsbawm right, the mechanics of the twin revolutions forced all of this to happen, and forced its eventual resolution in 1848. His knowledge of history, in its grubby details, is too profound to let him take this inevitability too far, but in broad outline he seems convinced that the dual revolutions created tensions that could only be resolved in one way. The powder keg explodes in the very last sentence of this volume; a better tease to lure me into the second one could not be devised.
Hobsbawm has a certain style that I can't quite pin down, but which is in many ways difficult to pierce. For one, the mass of evidence he lays down is imposing. But it's all in the form of sketches, with very few quotes from actual people. In part this may be because he expects me to know things that any educated person should know; if recent reading has taught me anything, it's that I'm not especially well educated.
An educated person should also be able to handle the highly recursive structure of his paragraphs. He's a very top-down writer: he'll mention the broad point he wants to make, then dive into the details and break each of them down into subpoints. He continues this for a few layers, and if you're paying close attention you can connect all of them. Hobsbawm's prose doesn't necessarily remind you of where you started as he moves along; he leaves that up to you.
The book could stand to be better footnoted, and it would make this reader happier if the for-further-reading notes were at the end of each section; a for-further-reading on how the dual revolutions impacted art, for instance, would be lovely. As it is, the book recommendations are all crammed together past the endpapers; I didn't realize they were there until perhaps 2/3 of the way through.
All of this is in the way of cavilling, however. Hobsbawm's argument is clear and convincing, and does an excellent job synthesizing all of European history during a 59-year-period into a 300-page book. I can't wait to start the next volume.
 Marxist history at its finest December 16, 2006
2 out of 22 found this review helpful
Hobsbawm takes a look at the age of revolution in Europe during the time frame of 1789-1848 and botches just about everything. He is so focused on Marxism that he misses almost all of the other aspects of these revolutions. You are so distracted by his Marxist overtones that you end up missing what he is talking about in most of the book. It is poorly written and if I had not had to read the book I would have stopped after the first twenty pages. Find anything else.
 Great deal September 25, 2005
2 out of 24 found this review helpful
Book arrived in time and in the conditions annouced. I'd buy from you again. Great deal!
A MASTERPIECE January 29, 2004
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
It is quite dificult to find a History book who is well written and also makes you think about the subject. This is the main diference about Hobswamn. He makes you think, and I believe this is the main aim for a Historian. It is curious for me that one of the reviewers complaints about the lack of interest that the author shows for the American revolution. Maybe if we think in the world of XXth century or XXIst one we can consider this situation quite strange, but in the XVIIIth century the new born United States were not important in the world. Besides the influence of the principles of the American constitution cannot be compared with the influence of the French revolution. In the last book of the serie The Age of Catastrophe is when the rol of the United States is more important so he makes a brilliant anylisis of its influence in Contemporary History.
This book and the other three are very didactic and I recomend them as a very useful reading for teachers and pupils. Specially as a teacher I think that this book creates a great starting point to begin a debate at class. Even when your class is full of teenagers who ussually think History is a boring matter.
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