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On History by Hobsbawm, Prof Eric (1997) Hardcover
Available for the first time in an affordable paperback edition, "On History" presents key essays of history by "one of the few genuinely great historians of our century" ("New Republic").
Hardcover
First published January 1, 1997
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About the author
Eric J. Hobsbawm
215 books1,708 followersEric John Ernest Hobsbawm was a British historian of the rise of industrial capitalism, socialism and nationalism. His best-known works include his tetralogy about what he called the "long 19th century" (The Age of Revolution: Europe 1789–1848, The Age of Capital: 1848–1875 and The Age of Empire: 1875–1914) and the "short 20th century" (The Age of Extremes), and an edited volume that introduced the influential idea of "invented traditions". A life-long Marxist, his socio-political convictions influenced the character of his work.
Hobsbawm was born in Alexandria, Egypt, and spent his childhood mainly in Vienna and Berlin. Following the death of his parents and the rise to power of Adolf Hitler, Hobsbawm moved to London with his adoptive family. After serving in the Second World War, he obtained his PhD in history at the University of Cambridge. In 1998, he was appointed to the Order of the Companions of Honour. He was president of Birkbeck, University of London, from 2002 until his death. In 2003, he received the Balzan Prize for European History since 1900, "for his brilliant analysis of the troubled history of 20th century Europe and for his ability to combine in-depth historical research with great literary talent."
Hobsbawm was born in Alexandria, Egypt, and spent his childhood mainly in Vienna and Berlin. Following the death of his parents and the rise to power of Adolf Hitler, Hobsbawm moved to London with his adoptive family. After serving in the Second World War, he obtained his PhD in history at the University of Cambridge. In 1998, he was appointed to the Order of the Companions of Honour. He was president of Birkbeck, University of London, from 2002 until his death. In 2003, he received the Balzan Prize for European History since 1900, "for his brilliant analysis of the troubled history of 20th century Europe and for his ability to combine in-depth historical research with great literary talent."
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 32 reviews
June 12, 2025
Que excelente leitura! O Hobsbawm trata de uma série de temas importantíssimos para uma maior reflexão sobre pensamentos historiográficos. Trata-os com profundidade e de forma brilhante, desde a importância do marxismo, da história com a ciência económica, até à construção de identidade. Muito bom, que me ajude para o exame de Teoria!!
February 5, 2025
Eric Hobsbawm's genius is how he, through razor sharp ideological precision, can communicate the most complex political-economic history to a mass audience.
This is not such a book. On History is a compilation of Hobsbawm's specialist journal articles and lectures given to audiences of academic historians. It is theoretically dense and assumes a high level of prior knowledge.
I read it the first time when I was just embarking on my masters at Birkbeck and, while I was already convinced Hobsbawm was an all time great, my will to understand this book was greater than my capacity.
Now, several years later, I have come back to it and absorbed it more fully. Worth it for his scathing treatment of postmodern relativism and for its demonstrations of really sophisticated marxist reasoning. Newcomers to Hobsbawm should try... any of his other books. Old hands can enjoy this like they might enjoy a good quality, but challenging, blue cheese.
This is not such a book. On History is a compilation of Hobsbawm's specialist journal articles and lectures given to audiences of academic historians. It is theoretically dense and assumes a high level of prior knowledge.
I read it the first time when I was just embarking on my masters at Birkbeck and, while I was already convinced Hobsbawm was an all time great, my will to understand this book was greater than my capacity.
Now, several years later, I have come back to it and absorbed it more fully. Worth it for his scathing treatment of postmodern relativism and for its demonstrations of really sophisticated marxist reasoning. Newcomers to Hobsbawm should try... any of his other books. Old hands can enjoy this like they might enjoy a good quality, but challenging, blue cheese.
April 15, 2022
Insightful, but at the same time difficult going if you are not a history buff. It is a compilation of essays Professor Hobsbawm delivered at various times. From Social History to the History of Society is one of my favourite pieces. The changing understanding of social history, from its reference of the poor, the movements of the poor and the possible alternative meaning of its reference to labour and socialist ideas and organizations had to be read twice to get a better gist of what the author was driving at. Those well versed in the subject of history may, perhaps, have a better understanding of some of the essays and the historical references littered all over the pages. I still have others books of his to read: Age of Capital: Empire and Extremes. My mind shudders.
October 26, 2013
This is a heavy-weight set of meditations on historiography. Thoughtful and thought-provoking, but in parts it is highly dense and heavy going. Some years ago now I did my first degree in a distinctly Marxist Anthropology Dept., and so I was surprised (and somewhat startled!) to find I could follow and found the chapters on Marx particularly illuminating. Likewise, I found the later chapters on the 'Annales', History from Below, counterfactuals, and, post-modernism/identity history all made very fruitful reading. Hobsbawm is widely regarded as a formidable historian, and, as a first taster, in reading this book I can well see why!
May 6, 2018
Dusty old Marxist professor gives dusty old lectures and collects them in this published dusty volume of Marxist theory.
I was hoping for something more substantial from one of the UK's most widely read historians
I was hoping for something more substantial from one of the UK's most widely read historians
September 24, 2021
Over more than five decades as an active historian Eric Hobsbawm achieved all that could be hoped for in his career and has left a lasting legacy, so it makes sense for a new generation to learn from that experience. This collection of essays is largely based on talks given at various times from 1970 through to the 1990s. This gives them a relaxed style and the comments range from the whimsical and very particular through to the highest abstraction and some unexpectedly penetrating insights. What a pity these talks were given before the age of YouTube.
Some quotes
Why… do all regimes make their young study some history in school? Not to understand their society and how it changes, but to approve of it, to be proud of it, to be or become good citizens… and the same is true of causes or movements. History as inspiration and ideology has a built-in tendency to become self-justifying myth. Nothing is a more dangerous blindfold than this, as the history of modern nations and nationalism demonstrates. [p47]
May I add that I believe Marxism to be much the best approach to history because it is more clearly aware than other approaches of what human beings can do as the subjects and makers of history as well as what, as objects of history, they can’t. And it is the best, incidentally, because, as the virtual inventor of the sociology of knowledge, Marx also evolved a theory about how the idea of historians themselves are likely to be affected by their social being. [p86]
Indeed, if you look at it from another perspective – say from that of the Japanese in the 1860s – a pre-existing society may see itself as adapting and co-opting capitalism as a way to keep itself viable. For this reason, simple determinism or functionalism will not do. [p90]
But historians are pretty well united in holding that, for most of nineteenth century Europe, … the actual purpose of primary education was not economic, unlike that of, say, technical education. It was, in the first place, ideological and political: to instil religion, morality and obedience among the poor, to teach them to accept the existing society contentedly and to bring their children up to do likewise, … The social costs of primary education in this sense are not to be calculated as though they had been investments in higher productivity for the economy. [p153]
To compare societies in terms of their system of internal relations between members is to compare like with like. It is when we compare them in respect of their capacity to control outside nature that the differences leap to the eye. [p199]
For it is an essential characteristic of Marx’s historical thought that it is neither ‘sociological’ nor ‘economic’ but both simultaneously. The social relations of production and reproduction (that is social organization in its broadest sense) and the material forces of production cannot be divorced. [p202]
At the same time it must be admitted that Marx’s own model must be made more explicit than it is in his writings, that it may require elaboration and development, and that certain vestiges of the nineteenth-century positivism, more evident in Engels’ formulations than in Marx’s own thought, must be cleared out of the way. [p204]
For the Marxists who reached the point of publishing widely read books and occupying senior positions in academic life in the 1950s were often only the radicalized students of the 1930s or 1940s, reaching the normal peak of their careers. [p206]
The first volume of Capital contains three or four fairly marginal references to Protestantism, yet the entire debate on the relationship between religion in general, and Protestantism in particular, and the capitalist mode of production derives from them. [p210]
The materialist conception of history is worth discussing at greater length because it is today controverted or criticized not only by non-Marxists and anti-Marxists, but also within Marxism. … It is essentially directed against the belief that ‘ideas, thoughts, concepts produce, determine and dominate men, their material conditions and real life. From 1846 this conception remained essentially the same. It can be summarized in a single sentence, repeated with variations: ‘It is not consciousness that determines life, but life that determines consciousness.’ [p211]
This seems to create a catch-22 situation. Either there is not a general tendency for material forces of production of society to develop, or to develop beyond a certain point – in which case the development of Western capitalism has to be explained without primary reference to such a general tendency, and the materialist conception of history can at best be used to explain a special case… Or else there is such a general historical tendency – in which case we have to explain why it has not operated everywhere, or even why in many cases (such as China) it has clearly been effectively counteracted… In my view, this does not create an insuperable problem for the materialist conception of history as a way of interpreting the world… However, it does create a very difficult problem for the materialist conception of history as a way of changing the world. The core of Marx’s argument in this respect is that revolution must come because the forces of production have reached, or must reach, a point at which they are incompatible with the ‘capitalist integument’ of relations of production But if it can be shown that in other societies there has been no trend for the material forces to grow, or that their growth has been controlled, side-tracked or otherwise prevented by the force of social organisation and superstructure from causing revolution in the sense of the 1859 Preface, then why should not the same occur in bourgeoise society? [pp216, 217]
Science is a dialogue between different views based upon a common method. It only ceases to be science when there is no method for deciding which of the contending views is wrong. [p224]
Probably neo-conservative history has gained ground, at any rate in Britain, both in terms of the ‘young antiquarian empiricists’ who ‘write detailed political narratives which implicitly deny there is any deep seated meaning to history except the accidental whims of fortune and personality’, and in the form of works like Theodore Zeldin’s (and Richard Cobb’s) remarkable plunges into those strata of the past. To which ‘almost every aspect of traditional history’ is irrelevant, including the answering of questions. So probably has what might be called anti-intellectual leftist history. [p249]
Price shares the view that ‘the primary aim of historical analysis is the recovery … of the lived experience of people in their past’, an aim which does not exhaust historical analysis for many of us and a statement devoid of meaning unless there is prior agreement about what buts of an infinite ‘lived reality’ we are talking about. [[p261]
Every historian has his or her own lifetime, a private perch from which to survey the world. [p304]
Like his greater contemporary Charles de Gaulle, [Churchill] knew that the loss of a people’s dignity, pride and self-respect may be worse for it than the loss of wars and empires. We can see this as we look around Britain today. [p306]
The passage of time has provided us with the historian’s ultimate weapon, hindsight…. It can often be misleading. [p310]
The old traditional England which Mrs Thatcher did so much to bury relied on the enormous strength of custom and convention. One did not what ‘ought to be’ done, but what was done; as the phrase went, ‘The done thing’. But we no longer know what ‘the done thing’ is. There is only ‘one’s own thing’. [p349]
History as fiction has received an academic reinforcement from an unexpected quarter: the ‘growing scepticism concerning the Enlightenment project of rationality.’ The fashion for what (at least in Anglo-Saxon academic discourse) is known by the vague term ‘postmodernism’ has fortunately not gained as much ground among historians as among literary and cultural theorists and social anthropologists, even in the USA, but it … throws doubt on the distinction between fact and fiction, objective reality and conceptual discourse… it is essential for historians to defend the foundations of their discipline: the supremacy of evidence. [p358]
Reading the desires of the present into the past, or, in technical terms, anachronism, is the most common and convenient technique of creating a history satisfying the needs of what benedict Anderson has called ‘imagined communities’ or collectives, which are by no means only national ones. [p360]
Unfortunately, as the situation in large parts of the world at the end of our millennium demonstrates, bad history is not harmless history. It is dangerous. The sentences typed on apparently innocuous keyboards may be sentences of death. [p366]
Some quotes
Why… do all regimes make their young study some history in school? Not to understand their society and how it changes, but to approve of it, to be proud of it, to be or become good citizens… and the same is true of causes or movements. History as inspiration and ideology has a built-in tendency to become self-justifying myth. Nothing is a more dangerous blindfold than this, as the history of modern nations and nationalism demonstrates. [p47]
May I add that I believe Marxism to be much the best approach to history because it is more clearly aware than other approaches of what human beings can do as the subjects and makers of history as well as what, as objects of history, they can’t. And it is the best, incidentally, because, as the virtual inventor of the sociology of knowledge, Marx also evolved a theory about how the idea of historians themselves are likely to be affected by their social being. [p86]
Indeed, if you look at it from another perspective – say from that of the Japanese in the 1860s – a pre-existing society may see itself as adapting and co-opting capitalism as a way to keep itself viable. For this reason, simple determinism or functionalism will not do. [p90]
But historians are pretty well united in holding that, for most of nineteenth century Europe, … the actual purpose of primary education was not economic, unlike that of, say, technical education. It was, in the first place, ideological and political: to instil religion, morality and obedience among the poor, to teach them to accept the existing society contentedly and to bring their children up to do likewise, … The social costs of primary education in this sense are not to be calculated as though they had been investments in higher productivity for the economy. [p153]
To compare societies in terms of their system of internal relations between members is to compare like with like. It is when we compare them in respect of their capacity to control outside nature that the differences leap to the eye. [p199]
For it is an essential characteristic of Marx’s historical thought that it is neither ‘sociological’ nor ‘economic’ but both simultaneously. The social relations of production and reproduction (that is social organization in its broadest sense) and the material forces of production cannot be divorced. [p202]
At the same time it must be admitted that Marx’s own model must be made more explicit than it is in his writings, that it may require elaboration and development, and that certain vestiges of the nineteenth-century positivism, more evident in Engels’ formulations than in Marx’s own thought, must be cleared out of the way. [p204]
For the Marxists who reached the point of publishing widely read books and occupying senior positions in academic life in the 1950s were often only the radicalized students of the 1930s or 1940s, reaching the normal peak of their careers. [p206]
The first volume of Capital contains three or four fairly marginal references to Protestantism, yet the entire debate on the relationship between religion in general, and Protestantism in particular, and the capitalist mode of production derives from them. [p210]
The materialist conception of history is worth discussing at greater length because it is today controverted or criticized not only by non-Marxists and anti-Marxists, but also within Marxism. … It is essentially directed against the belief that ‘ideas, thoughts, concepts produce, determine and dominate men, their material conditions and real life. From 1846 this conception remained essentially the same. It can be summarized in a single sentence, repeated with variations: ‘It is not consciousness that determines life, but life that determines consciousness.’ [p211]
This seems to create a catch-22 situation. Either there is not a general tendency for material forces of production of society to develop, or to develop beyond a certain point – in which case the development of Western capitalism has to be explained without primary reference to such a general tendency, and the materialist conception of history can at best be used to explain a special case… Or else there is such a general historical tendency – in which case we have to explain why it has not operated everywhere, or even why in many cases (such as China) it has clearly been effectively counteracted… In my view, this does not create an insuperable problem for the materialist conception of history as a way of interpreting the world… However, it does create a very difficult problem for the materialist conception of history as a way of changing the world. The core of Marx’s argument in this respect is that revolution must come because the forces of production have reached, or must reach, a point at which they are incompatible with the ‘capitalist integument’ of relations of production But if it can be shown that in other societies there has been no trend for the material forces to grow, or that their growth has been controlled, side-tracked or otherwise prevented by the force of social organisation and superstructure from causing revolution in the sense of the 1859 Preface, then why should not the same occur in bourgeoise society? [pp216, 217]
Science is a dialogue between different views based upon a common method. It only ceases to be science when there is no method for deciding which of the contending views is wrong. [p224]
Probably neo-conservative history has gained ground, at any rate in Britain, both in terms of the ‘young antiquarian empiricists’ who ‘write detailed political narratives which implicitly deny there is any deep seated meaning to history except the accidental whims of fortune and personality’, and in the form of works like Theodore Zeldin’s (and Richard Cobb’s) remarkable plunges into those strata of the past. To which ‘almost every aspect of traditional history’ is irrelevant, including the answering of questions. So probably has what might be called anti-intellectual leftist history. [p249]
Price shares the view that ‘the primary aim of historical analysis is the recovery … of the lived experience of people in their past’, an aim which does not exhaust historical analysis for many of us and a statement devoid of meaning unless there is prior agreement about what buts of an infinite ‘lived reality’ we are talking about. [[p261]
Every historian has his or her own lifetime, a private perch from which to survey the world. [p304]
Like his greater contemporary Charles de Gaulle, [Churchill] knew that the loss of a people’s dignity, pride and self-respect may be worse for it than the loss of wars and empires. We can see this as we look around Britain today. [p306]
The passage of time has provided us with the historian’s ultimate weapon, hindsight…. It can often be misleading. [p310]
The old traditional England which Mrs Thatcher did so much to bury relied on the enormous strength of custom and convention. One did not what ‘ought to be’ done, but what was done; as the phrase went, ‘The done thing’. But we no longer know what ‘the done thing’ is. There is only ‘one’s own thing’. [p349]
History as fiction has received an academic reinforcement from an unexpected quarter: the ‘growing scepticism concerning the Enlightenment project of rationality.’ The fashion for what (at least in Anglo-Saxon academic discourse) is known by the vague term ‘postmodernism’ has fortunately not gained as much ground among historians as among literary and cultural theorists and social anthropologists, even in the USA, but it … throws doubt on the distinction between fact and fiction, objective reality and conceptual discourse… it is essential for historians to defend the foundations of their discipline: the supremacy of evidence. [p358]
Reading the desires of the present into the past, or, in technical terms, anachronism, is the most common and convenient technique of creating a history satisfying the needs of what benedict Anderson has called ‘imagined communities’ or collectives, which are by no means only national ones. [p360]
Unfortunately, as the situation in large parts of the world at the end of our millennium demonstrates, bad history is not harmless history. It is dangerous. The sentences typed on apparently innocuous keyboards may be sentences of death. [p366]
April 21, 2013
دراسات في التاريخ
ايريك هوبزباوم هو المؤرخ اليهودي البريطاني ذو الفكر الماركسي، صاحب المؤلفات الضخمة التي كتب فيها عن القرنين التاسع عشر والعشرين، والتي ترجمتها المنظمة العربية للترجمة تحت العناوين التالية (عصر الثورة، عصر رأس المال، عصر الإمبراطورية، عصر التطرفات).
يضم هذا الكتاب مجموعة من المحاضرات التي ألقاها هوبزباوم في مناسبات متفرقة، وعالج فيها مواضيع تاريخية أقدر أنها مهمة للمتخصصين فقط.
ايريك هوبزباوم هو المؤرخ اليهودي البريطاني ذو الفكر الماركسي، صاحب المؤلفات الضخمة التي كتب فيها عن القرنين التاسع عشر والعشرين، والتي ترجمتها المنظمة العربية للترجمة تحت العناوين التالية (عصر الثورة، عصر رأس المال، عصر الإمبراطورية، عصر التطرفات).
يضم هذا الكتاب مجموعة من المحاضرات التي ألقاها هوبزباوم في مناسبات متفرقة، وعالج فيها مواضيع تاريخية أقدر أنها مهمة للمتخصصين فقط.
December 14, 2024
O livro é constituído de 22 capítulos cujo conteúdo varia de discussões sobre o sentido do passado até uma breve introdução ao manifesto comunista. Hobsbawm ao longo dos textos propõe discussões extremamente essenciais para o historiador do século xx e do xxi.
Além de tudo isso, temos o privilégio de ler sua percepção pessoal sobre eventos históricos fundamentais como a Segunda Guerra Mundial.
Além de tudo isso, temos o privilégio de ler sua percepção pessoal sobre eventos históricos fundamentais como a Segunda Guerra Mundial.
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December 4, 2025So insightful!! Even though so much has changed in the field since this was published, many of Hobsbawm’s observations and warnings still ring very true. There is so much to get from this in thinking about how to approach history as a practice.
November 10, 2019
I enjoyed the first few chapters. I lost interest when discussing Marx as it was too complex and analogies made no sense. Funny as the reason why I decided to read it was the part I disliked the most. Have made some useful notes, however, society and the relationship with historiography. A good read to get a grasp on historiography (well the first half anyway).
March 15, 2023
In some 21 essays, Eric Hobsbawm covers a variety of topics related to the methodologies of writing history as well as the significance of the discipline of history in present times. Hobsbawm's take on these various aspects related to history writing and historians, are oft provocative but also pretty relevant, even if some of the arguments feel a bit dated. In recent times, I feel there haven't been enough literature that has commiserated on the transformation and politicization of history writing in recent times. In this regard, Hobsbawm's On History is an older but welcome read for those who want to ponder over the many logistics of history writing. Some of his essays relating to history and economics, social history, Marxist history, Eurocentrism etc. are particularly insightful. Though he some other pieces, he does seem slightly dismissive of other developments in historical methodology, especially in regard to the relevance of gender history (the author has acknowledged that gap in one of the postscripts of his essays) as well as of postmodernist takes on history, it is still an important enough book that students of history can read and partake in. Only weird moments are when he tries to talk of changing sexual attitudes but those are just very awkward takes that really does not go into any depth given how much gender history has contributed to opening up the discipline of history to more critical analysis of the historical sources.
April 13, 2021
My three-star rating is for me. For other readers, I'm sure that this book would qualify as four- or even five-star material. The problem for me was that at least a third of it went right over my head. Quite humbling. This is a collection of lectures by Hobsbawn during his career on historiography - the writing of history. Understanding the circumstances surro7unding historians when they are writing is just as important as understanding what they write. Much of his writing on economic historians was far beyond me, citing historians I haven't read and events with which I am unfamiliar. But the parts i did comprehend were fascinating. That doesn't mean I am going to recommend this book to a casual reader of history. I wouldn't want to scare them away. It is heavy and deep.
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December 14, 2021I can't rate this book because it is intended for a specialist audience (historians, and graduate students in history) and not the general layman. It is also a collection of lectures that Hobsbawm gave over a 30 year period, and so some of the comments he makes may have become dated by now, but I can't judge that. If you are a graduate student in history, you may well find this work to be of great value. It does not seem to be too relevant to a general audience.
February 10, 2022
El autor aborda la complejidad de la historiografía con maestría y sin dejar nada en el aire. Sin embargo, me hubiera gustado que el material fuese genuino y no una recopilación de conferencias. Considero que la explicación se diluye en las cuestiones coyunturales de cada charla y complica que el lector se impregne de las ideas principales de cada capítulo.
September 27, 2023
💥💥 Otra guía fundamental de mis años de estudiante. On history (sobre la historia, en español) de Eric Hobsbawm.
🏠 Este libro es como una guía con diferentes temas de la historia y cómo ésta es vista por el hombre actual.
💆♀️ Me parece un buen libro para tener una guía práctica sobre diferentes temas de la historia mundial.
🏠 Este libro es como una guía con diferentes temas de la historia y cómo ésta es vista por el hombre actual.
💆♀️ Me parece un buen libro para tener una guía práctica sobre diferentes temas de la historia mundial.
August 22, 2017
Reminds me of E.H.Carr's "What is History"...
October 3, 2020
Ótimo livro.
December 28, 2021
Nunca hay pierde al leer al maestro Hobsbawm. En este caso, da un panorama diverso sobre la historia y sus múltiples implicancias en nuestra vida individual y en las sociedades.
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February 13, 2022Good old marxy
May 31, 2021
A Classic. Sums up a Marxism that dissented from the various cultural interventions into historiography at the end of the 20th century. Valuable insight as the extremes of the 1990s are reigned in and economic determinism, albeit refreshed, makes a return.
February 4, 2022
This was a re-read because I'm missing the academic depths of my inner historian.
My favourite thing about re-reading this was seeing my undergrad-self's pencil notes in the margins - I was so eager & fresh those 4 years ago...
However I did find myself zoning out at times (especially in the chapters on Marxist or economic history, whoops), so maybe I am losing that academic depth a little bit!
Still, Hobsbawm is a legend who deserves his reputation as one of the best historians of the past century. Will I ever be one ?
My favourite thing about re-reading this was seeing my undergrad-self's pencil notes in the margins - I was so eager & fresh those 4 years ago...
However I did find myself zoning out at times (especially in the chapters on Marxist or economic history, whoops), so maybe I am losing that academic depth a little bit!
Still, Hobsbawm is a legend who deserves his reputation as one of the best historians of the past century. Will I ever be one ?
January 2, 2014
A book which is a collection of Hobsbawm's writing over 4 decades is not an easy one for anyone who is not aware of the European history in detail.
He seems to be talking to experts at various points and is not a non-expert guide to History. But a few chapters like the one on Barbaniasm are certainly the best one can come across.
Would not recommend the book but only a few chapters to the History enthusiasts for the sheer power of the ideas.
Manish Saini
He seems to be talking to experts at various points and is not a non-expert guide to History. But a few chapters like the one on Barbaniasm are certainly the best one can come across.
Would not recommend the book but only a few chapters to the History enthusiasts for the sheer power of the ideas.
Manish Saini
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May 21, 2009In depth historiography by the master, Hobsbawm. Early chapters explain the uses of history to society. He criticizes the breaking down of history into smaller and smaller subsets. Puts down cliometrics. But I met my Waterloo in the chapters on Marx. I couldn't grasp enough of what he was saying and quit.
May 5, 2013
If you want to hear the different machinations that history employs on our lives , and the way history evolves , this is a must read . Hobsbawm needs no introduction. He is the historian par excellence .
December 8, 2007
The man tells it like it is!
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April 14, 2009I really wanted to read this after reading a couple things about Hobsbawm and tried over and over again, but it's not history the way I enjoyed reading. Oh well!
May 2, 2015
Excellent collection. Particularly pertinent in its assault on postmodernist theory in sociological and historiographical fields.
June 3, 2015
Actually only read a couple of chapters of this but it seems well written and I Know where I should come if I want a decent collection of essays on the philosophy of history.
September 3, 2016
A group of essays on historical method and theory by a master historian. Well worth looking at.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 32 reviews