Book description
The final book of the brilliant historian and indomitable public
critic Tony Judt, Thinking the Twentieth Century unites the
conflicted intellectual history of an epoch into a soaring narrative.
The twentieth century comes to life as an age of ideas - a time
when, for good and for ill, the thoughts of the few reigned over the
lives of the many. Judt presents the triumphs and the failures of
prominent intellectuals, adeptly explaining both their ideas and the
risks of their political commitments. Spanning an era with
unprecedented clarity and insight, Thinking the Twentieth
Century is a tour de force, a classic study of modern thought by
one of the century's most incisive thinkers.
The exceptional nature of this work is evident in its very structure
- a series of intimate conversations between Judt and his friend and
fellow historian Timothy Snyder, grounded in the texts of the time and
focused by the intensity of their vision. Judt's astounding eloquence
and range are on display here as never before. Traversing the
complexities of modern life with ease, he and Snyder revive both
thoughts and thinkers, guiding us through the debates that made our
world. As forgotten ideas are revisited and fashionable trends
scrutinized, the shape of a century emerges. Judt and Snyder draw us
deep into their analysis, making us feel that we too are part of the
conversation. We become aware of the obligations of the present to the
past, and the force of historical perspective and moral considerations
in the critique and reform of society, then and now.
In restoring and indeed exemplifying the best of intellectual life
in the twentieth century, Thinking the Twentieth Century opens
pathways to a moral life for the twenty-first. This is a book about
the past, but it is also an argument for the kind of future we should
strive for: Thinking the Twentieth Century is about the life of
the mind - and the mindful life.
Tony Judt was educated at King's College, Cambridge, and the Ã
cole Normale Supérieure, Paris, and taught at Cambridge, Oxford and
Berkeley. He was the Erich Maria Remarque Professor of European
Studies at New York University, as well as the founder and director of
the Remarque Institute, dedicated to creating an ongoing conversation
between Europe and America.
The author or editor of fourteen books, Professor Judt was a
frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books, the
Times Literary Supplement, The New Republic, The New York Times
and many journals across Europe and the United States. Professor
Judt is the author of The Memory Chalet, Ill Fares the Land,
Reappraisals: Reflections on the Forgotten Twentieth Century and
Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945, which was one of the
New York Times Book Review's Ten Best Books of 2005, the
winner of the Council on Foreign Relations Arthur Ross Book Award and
a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He died in August 2010 at the age
of sixty-two.
Timothy Snyder studied at Brown and Oxford, held fellowships
in Paris, Warsaw and Vienna and at Harvard, and is a professor of
history at Yale. He is the author of five award-winning books of
European history; the most recent of which, Bloodlands: Europe
Between Hitler and Stalin, was named a book of the year by more
than ten publications and is being translated into more than twenty languages.
