The Age of Extremes cover art

The Age of Extremes

1914-1991

 Preview
LIMITED TIME OFFER

3 months free
Try for £0.00
£8.99/mo thereafter. Renews automatically. Terms apply. Offer ends 31 July 2025 at 23:59 GMT.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.

The Age of Extremes

By: Eric Hobsbawm
Narrated by: Hugh Kermode
Try for £0.00

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Offer ends 31 July 2025 23:59 GMT. Cancel monthly.

Buy Now for £16.99

Buy Now for £16.99

Confirm Purchase
Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.
Cancel

About this listen

The Age of Extremes is eminent historian Eric Hobsbawm's personal vision of the 20th century. Remarkable in its scope, and breathtaking in its depth of knowledge, this immensely rewarding book reviews the uniquely destructive and creative nature of the troubled 20th century and makes challenging predicitions for the future.

©1994 Eric Hobsbawm (P)2020 Hachette Audio UK 20th Century Europe Modern Socialism Capitalism Imperialism Russia Interwar Period Soviet Union Latin American War Middle Ages Africa Taxation Middle East Self-Determination China

Listeners also enjoyed...

 Modern China (2nd Edition) cover art
History of the Russian Revolution cover art
The Soviet Century cover art
Richard Nixon cover art
The Thirty Years War cover art
The Outsiders cover art
Belarus cover art
The Third Reich in Power cover art
My Promised Land cover art
Blackshirts and Reds cover art
You Say You Want a Revolution? cover art
Korea cover art
The Ukrainians (Fifth Edition) cover art
The Third Reich at War cover art
The Revolution Betrayed cover art
The War of Nerves cover art
All stars
Most relevant  
Wonderful analysis even if you’re not a Marxist. The style and argument is so you can disagree in a sensible way!

Brilliant classic

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
A truly masterful, all-encompassing narrative done justice to by Hugh Kermode's riveting narration!
Very much looking forward to listening to the preceding volumes!🙏😊

Masterful!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Hobsbawm manages to pull apart and lay out every important event, idea or organisation from the 20th century in an easily digestible way. The nuance in his critique of political movements and organisations is also surprisingly refreshing. Deviating from a lot of other historians who treated post WW2 politics as "the end of ideology", Hobsbawm perfectly summarises the rise and fall of various political beliefs and ideologies during this period, laying out summary of neoliberalism in the later chapters which was extremely ahead of its time. His nuance in examination of left wing politics is also some of the best in almost any history book I've read. This is a read which has changed how I view the world and the forces that shape it, and given me a much greater understanding of how those forces interact. Kermodes performance is a great mix of sensible and slow-paced, perfect for soaking in stories and information while multi-tasking.

The Best 20th Century Summary

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Excellent book, bad audiobook. The performance was exceptional, but I believe this book is not properly consumed as an audiobook. In my opinion, it is best enjoyed in its physical form, while taking notes and reflecting upon what is presented.

Still, the analysis of the "short twentieth century" is very detailed and nuanced. I believe that anyone who wants to properly understand the complicated history of the twentieth century has to read this book.

Excellent but

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Writing is unbearably tedious and uninteresting. Narrator is fine but since he’s reading such a boring book, there isn’t much he can do to save it.

Horribly boring

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I'm sure in its print format this would make a valuable textbook on early to mid-20th Century politics and sociology for students sympathetic to a Marxist world view.

If however you're more into history books that bring a period to life so vividly you're gripped from the first to the last - peopled by memorable characters, exploits and famous events - I would avoid this laboriously dull sociology lecture, which almost makes a virtue of 'leaving out' or 'racing through', the most interesting events of the period for the average listener. It also kept jumping around in time from a pre-WW1 world to a post-WW2 world and anywhere in between (well, at least in the early parts of the book which was all I could manage).

I think I was tricked by the high rating and the book being on a 'buy one get one free' offer. After listening through half of the introduction (so dull I decided to fast-forward to Chapter 1), I doggedly persevered through the whole of Chapter 1 and the start of Chapter 2, before finally throwing in the towel.

I normally listen to audible books while cooking dinner in the evening, and a good one can keep me so engrossed I almost forget what I'm cooking. But with this one, 10, 20 or sometimes 30 minutes would go by before I realised I hadn't remembered a word. It really was that bad. I tried, I truly did, but in the end I had to remind myself that life is too short to spend 25 hours 39 minutes of it listening to something that gives you no enjoyment whatsoever.

Dry, Marxist-centred lecture

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.