When I was 13, I got to fly in a prop plane, and for the first time viewed my home, school, and everything I knew from 2000 ft. For the first time, maps made sense, and I could see the city as more than a collection of houses and streets.

Age of Extremes is the historical equivalent of such an epiphany. While the events of the 20th century are not a mystery to most that would browse this book, the framing and context from a much higher view than we are used to viewing is refreshing. As a warning: Don’t read this book without reading others in the series, much of the value is being able to compare the 20th century to other times during modernity, and without that basis the value of reading this book would be greatly diminished.

In the short 20th century (1914-1991) The population tripled, the economy exploded, and the world spent nearly every year in some form of ideological struggle. Sciences ascended to the realm of magic, while still disappointing the rationalist dreams of titans of previous eras.

Hobsbawm splits the short 20th century into three sections:

  • Age of catastrophe: WW1, WW2 and the great depression.
  • Golden Age: 1945 - 1969
  • Landslide: 1969 - 1991

Hobsbawm is able to put together trends, such as the true doubts around capitalism and worldwide retreat of liberal democracy during the depression that are only possible with such a broad sweep of history. By avoiding blow-by-blow accounts, he can focus on the effects of events like the major world wars and how they influenced ideology and one-another.

Particularly interesting to me was the gap in expectations between those born in the golden age and their parents born during the age of catastrophe. This book helped explain heretofore odd behaviors and beliefs of both my parents and grandparents that have echo down through the generations.

Hobsbawm, perhaps mainly through his antipathy towards America capitalism, is a crucial narrator for the events of the 20th century. While chapters around the failed experiment of the Soviet Union somewhat apologist, I’d gladly pay that price to avoid the winners bias and triumphalism that comes from many histories. The broad sweep allows for revelations that only matter in the context of the entire tetralogy, such as: “the World was American, or it was provincial.”

This could have easily been three books on each section of the short 20th century, and it would have been just as enjoyable. Sadly, the history of the unipolar moment and now global rebalancing remains to be written. It may have taken four books for Hobsbawm to get to his ultimate zinger, but for me it was well worth the ride: “as always, history only took marginal notice of human intentions.”