Volume 50, Number 18 · November 20, 2003
The Last Romantic
By Tony Judt
Interesting Times: A Twentieth-Century Life
by Eric Hobsbawm
Pantheon, 448 pp., $30.00
At the age of eighty-six, Eric Hobsbawm is the best-known historian in the world. His most recent book, The Age of Extremes, was translated into dozens of languages, from Chinese to Czech. His memoirs, first published last year, were a best seller in New Delhi; in parts of South America—Brazil especially—he is a cultural folk hero. His fame is well deserved. He controls vast continents of information with confident ease—his Cambridge college supervisor, after telling me once that Eric Hobsbawm was the cleverest undergraduate he had ever taught, added: 'Of course, you couldn't say I taught him—he was unteachable. Eric already knew everything.'
Review, 4002 words
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