Reappraisals: Reflections on the Forgotten Twentieth Century

The accelerating changes of the past generation have been accompanied by a similarly accelerated amnesia. The twentieth century has become “history” at an unprecedented rate. The world of 2007 is so utterly unlike that of even 1987, much less any earlier time, that we have lost touch with our immediate past even before we have begun to make sense of it—and the results are proving calamitous.

In less than a generation, the headlong advance of globalization has altered structures of thought that had been essentially unchanged since the European industrial revolution. As a result, we have lost touch with a century of social thought and socially motivated activism. In the twenty-four essays in Reappraisals, Judt resurrects the key aspects of the world we have lost to remind us how important they still are to us now and to our future.

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Reappraisals: Reflections on the Forgotten Twentieth Century

The accelerating changes of the past generation have been accompanied by a similarly accelerated amnesia. The twentieth century has become “history” at an unprecedented rate. The world of 2007 is so utterly unlike that of even 1987, much less any earlier time, that we have lost touch with our immediate past even before we have begun to make sense of it—and the results are proving calamitous.

In less than a generation, the headlong advance of globalization has altered structures of thought that had been essentially unchanged since the European industrial revolution. As a result, we have lost touch with a century of social thought and socially motivated activism. In the twenty-four essays in Reappraisals, Judt resurrects the key aspects of the world we have lost to remind us how important they still are to us now and to our future.

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Reappraisals: Reflections on the Forgotten Twentieth Century

Reappraisals: Reflections on the Forgotten Twentieth Century

Reappraisals: Reflections on the Forgotten Twentieth Century

Reappraisals: Reflections on the Forgotten Twentieth Century

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Overview

The accelerating changes of the past generation have been accompanied by a similarly accelerated amnesia. The twentieth century has become “history” at an unprecedented rate. The world of 2007 is so utterly unlike that of even 1987, much less any earlier time, that we have lost touch with our immediate past even before we have begun to make sense of it—and the results are proving calamitous.

In less than a generation, the headlong advance of globalization has altered structures of thought that had been essentially unchanged since the European industrial revolution. As a result, we have lost touch with a century of social thought and socially motivated activism. In the twenty-four essays in Reappraisals, Judt resurrects the key aspects of the world we have lost to remind us how important they still are to us now and to our future.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781433243202
Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Publication date: 04/17/2008
Edition description: Unabridged

About the Author

TONY JUDT is the author or editor of twelve books and a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books, Times Literary Supplement, New Republic, and many other journals in Europe and the United States. His most recent book, Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

James Adams is the author of fourteen best-selling books of fiction and nonfiction, all of which deal with various aspects of warfare and intelligence. He is a radio host and former CEO of United Press International and managing editor of the Sunday Times (London). He was also a member of the advisory board of the National Security Agency.

Table of Contents

Introduction The world we have lost 1

Pt. 1 The heart of darkness 23

Ch. I Arthur Koestler, the exemplary intellectual 25

Ch. II The elementary truths of Primo Levi 44

Ch. III The Jewish Europe of Manes Sperber 63

Ch. IV Hannah Arendt and evil 73

Pt. 2 The politics of intellectual engagement 93

Ch. V Albert Camus : "the best man in France" 95

Ch. VI Elucubrations : the "Marxism" of Louis Althusser 106

Ch. VII Eric Hobsbawm and the romance of Communism 116

Ch. VIII Goodbye to all that? : Leszek Kolakowski and the Marxist legacy 129

Ch. IX A "pope of ideas"? : John Paul II and the modern world 147

Ch. X Edward Said : the rootless cosmopolitan 163

Pt. 3 Lost in transition : places and memories 179

Ch. XI The catastrophe : the fall of France, 1940 181

Ch. XII A la recherche du temps perdu : France and its pasts 196

Ch. XIII The gnome in the garden : Tony Blair and Britain's "heritage" 219

Ch. XIV The stateless state : why Belgium matters 233

Ch. XV Romania between history and Europe 250

Ch. XVI Dark victory : Israel's Six-Day War 268

Ch. XVII The country that wouldn't grow up 286

Pt. 4 The American (half-) century 297

Ch. XVIII An American tragedy? : the case of Whittaker Chambers 299

Ch. XIX The crisis : Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Cuba 314

Ch. XX The illusionist : Henry Kissinger and American foreign policy 341

Ch. XXI Whose story is it? : the Cold War in retrospect 368

Ch. XXII The silence of the lambs : on the strange death of liberal America 384

Ch. XXIII The good society : Europe vs. America 393

Envoi The social question redivivus 411

Publication credits 433

Index435

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Exhilarating . . . brave and forthright."
-The New York Times Book Review

"Perhaps the greatest single collection of thinking on the political, diplomatic, social, and cultural history of the past century."
-Forbes

"By turns fascinating [and] edifying . . . Judt is one of our foremost historians of Europe, an elegant writer and subtle thinker."
-Los Angeles Times

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