great historical writing which i highly recommend

hobsbawm writes with a highly engaging voice. he establishes ethos through the fact that he has lived through the age of extremes but he also makes clear that he may not be able to provide an impartial view as a result; his writing is thus able to achieve a level of immediacy and urgency that a writer who is born in the 21st century will not be able to replicate. i also like that hobsbawm offers moral judgment and emotional response to the immense tragedies and injustices that shaped the 20th century, for instance when he criticises neoliberal policies for failing to solve the problems that arose from the 70s onwards, instead intensifying the problems we faced (creating abhorrent levels of inequality, weakening central authority, etc.). 

hobsbawm also writes with the right degree of academic rigour. he picks his evidence judiciously and allows his arguments to unfold in a simple yet substantial way, allowing the reader to follow along with ease and be deeply enriched by the sheer knowledge and insight that hobsbawm presents on the page. 

i also appreciated hobsbawm's quoting of primary sources in the various epigraphs. they provided a diversity of perspectives and more importantly, unfiltered glimpses into the time period. in a way, this also reduces the reader's reliance on the potentially partial historian, allowing the book to tell the history of world as lived by people around the world, instead of simply the history that undergirded or pervaded the author's lived experience. 

here is a broad overview of the book's structure. 

it is divided into three main sections -- the age of catastrophe, golden age, and landslide.

the age of catastrophe: war, revolution, economic collapse, the rise of modernism, the fall of empires. a eurocentric history, understandably so.

golden age: economic boom, social changes, cultural upheaval. this section traverses the first, second, and third worlds, and delves into various strands of history -- social history, cultural history, economic history, etc.

landslide: economic problems, neoliberalism, ecological disaster, end of socialism/cold war, development of arts and sciences, ambiguous status of science, increasing pervasiveness of technology in society)

however, so what if one knows so much about the recent past? what matters more is how we plan to move forward. as a socially-concerned historian should, hobsbawm identifies the main problems that we face (overpopulation and ecological collapse) in the final chapter, 'towards the millennium', and proposes approaches to address them. 

some specific points from the book
1. the mass vilification of an 'enemy' in liberal democracies during the cold war (McCarthyism is the most infamous manifestation of that) and how it still lives on. it reminds me, also, of how Americans had to behave, outwardly, as patriotic americans and avow privacy to a certain extent; this public scrutiny played a part in plath's confessional poetry and novelistic writing (the bell jar). americans are not as free as they think, and it is dangerous how they not just worship a freedom that is highly flawed but also vilify 'the other' in order to defend their way of life. 
2. that the Eastern bloc weakened, surprisingly, during detente instead of periods of confrontation as the more dynamic capitalist half of the economy made inroads into the socialist economies.
3. the intertwining of the rise of consumerism, cultural changes from the 60s onwards, and economic neoliberalism along the dominant ideologies of individualism and antinomianism. all three share a belief in the idea that the world will naturally become better-arranged if everyone is allowed to do what they want to do. 
4. that the fear and rejection of science was fuelled by four feelings: science was incomprehensible, both its practical and moral consequences were unpredictable and probably catastrophic, it underlined the helplessness of the individual, it undermined authority. laypeople thus turned to things that science could not explain -- conspiracy theories -- in order to reclaim power, and find a community to stay rooted in a world that is increasingly unfamiliar to those left behind by 'progress'. the scepticism about UFOs, for instance, was put down to the jealousy of narrow-minded scientists who were helpless to explain phenomena beyond their narrow horizons perhaps even to a conspiracy of those who kept the common man in intellectual bondage to conceal superior wisdom from him.
5. the conditions for liberalism/democracy to flourish: general consent and legitimacy, compatibility between various components of 'the people', little governance necessary (parliaments came into existence not so much to govern as to control the power of those who did), and general wealth and prosperity. apropos of the third point, 19th-century bourgeois society assumed the bulk of its citizens' lives would take place not in the sphere of government but in the self-regulating economy and in the world of private and unofficial associations (civil society); it side-stepped the difficulties of running governments through elected assemblies in two way -- 1) not expecting too much governing or legislation from parliament and 2) seeing that government/administration could be carried on regardless of their vagaries.

 6. nation-states' loss of their monopoly of force weakened their ability to resolve conflicts diplomatically; the proliferation of weapons has also made the world a more violent place. 
7. the non-constructive, pervasive and manipulative media scrutiny of public institutions had had the effect of encouraging the side-stepping of democratic procedures by government/administration officials; the 20th century has seen a rise in the number of instances when proper governance is necessary and democratic politics in this new environment, as opposed to that of liberal 19th-century Britain, for instance, is not as conducive for governance
8. there is a need to restore trust in and power to public institutions

overall, the 20th century was the most volatile and polarised period in human history. it witnessed monumental human history that spanned the entire globe. it spawned disillusionment with progress, widening inequality, popular resentment. the age of extremes is a portrait of a world increasingly slipping out of control; even though it was characterised by the rise of the masses, they increasingly lost power to financial elites, and non-democratic supranational governments. in response, we are seeing the rise of right-wing populist nationalist movements. while there was progress, during the post-wwii years for instance, there was also regression, from the crisis decades onwards. it remains to be seen whether the 21st century will be even more unstable and unfathomable than the 20th.