Reappraisals
Reflections on the Forgotten Twentieth Century
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
“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
We have entered an age of forgetting. Our world, we insist, is unprecedented, wholly new. The past has nothing to teach us. Drawing provocative connections between a dazzling range of subjects, from Jewish intellectuals and the challenge of evil in the recent European past to the interpretation of the Cold War and the displacement of history by heritage, the late historian Tony Judt takes us beyond what we think we know of the past to explain how we came to know it, showing how much of our history has been sacrificed in the triumph of myth—making over understanding and denial over memory. Reappraisals offers a much-needed road map back to the historical sense we urgently need.
Judt's book, Ill Fares the Land, republished in 2021 featuring a new preface by bestselling author of Between the World and Me and The Water Dancer, Ta-Nehisi Coates.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Historian and political commentator Judt warns against the temptation "to look back upon the twentieth century as an age of political extremes, of tragic mistakes and wrongheaded choices; an age of delusion from which we have now, thankfully, emerged." In this collection of 24 previously printed essays (nearly all from the New York Review of Books and the New Republic), Judt, whose recent book Postwar was a Pulitzer finalist, pleads with readers to remember that the past never completely disappears and that the coming century is as fraught with dangers as the last. Buttressing his argument, Judt draws upon an impressively broad array of subjects. He begins by describing the eclipse of intellectuals as a public force (for instance, the steep decline in Arthur Koestler's reputation) before reminding his audience of the immense power of ideas by discussing the now inexplicable attractions of Marxism in the 20th century. In the book's penultimate section, Judt examines the rise of the state in the politics and economics of Western nations before finally tackling the United States, its foreign policy and the fate of liberalism. As a fascinating exploration of the world we have recently lost for good or bad, or both this collection, despite its lack of new content, cannot be bested.
Customer Reviews
Quite Interesting and Insightful
CONS: I am not a fan of the essay format, which makes the book seem too incoherent. Moreover, I think “Reappraisals” now feels a little dated because the analysis ends in early 2000s, unintentionally (and understandably) presented as a current end station, although so much has since happened and changed in our way of seeing the world. But that is OK because I consider those early years of the millennium to be the watershed between two centuries: They closed the 20th while laying the foundations for the 21st. So, in a way, Judt ended his analysis and career by getting to a period, a logical stopping point.
PROS: The book is an incredibly rich and insightful mosaic that paints a unique picture of the 20th century as seen from within. Perhaps, later historians will be able to reconstruct more detached portrayals, but this book provides a unique and invaluable insider’s intellectual perspective.