I know that everyone thinks Hobsbawm is such a great historian and all that jazz, but his writing style is too annoying to handle for a book this long. He starts every paragraph (okay, like every other paragraph) with "yet," "however," or "although," as if the whole book is him making statements and then contradicting himself. He gives meaningless, forgettable statistics throughout and overall this is the kind of book that you can spend 40 hours reading and still take away nothing away from.