12 results for "History"

How to change the world: reflections on Marx and Marxism

Hobsbawm, E. J.
"The ideas of capitalism's most vigorous and eloquent enemy have been enlightening in every era, the author contends, and our current historical situation of free-market extremes suggests that reading Marx may be more important now than ever. Hobsbawm begins with a consideration of how we should think about Marxism in the post-communist era, observing that the features we most associate with Soviet and related regimes--command economies, intrusive bureaucratic structures, and an economic and political condition of permanent was--are neither derived from Marx's ideas nor unique to socialist states. Further chapters discuss pre-Marxian socialists and Marx's radical break with them, Marx's political milieu, and the influence of his writings on the anti-fascist decades, the Cold War, and the post--Cold War period. Sweeping, provocative, and full of brilliant insights, How to Change the World challenges us to reconsider Marx and reassess his significance in the history of ideas."--Publisher's website.
Yale University Press 2011 470 pages

Industry and empire: from 1750 to the present day

Hobsbawm, E. J.
'The Industrial Revolution marks the most fundamental transformation in the history of the world recorded in written documents.' 'For a brief period,' writes Eric Hobsbawm, 'it coincided with the history of a single country, Great Britain.' His outstanding history describes and accounts for Britain's rise as the world's first industrial world power, its decline from the temporary dominance of the pioneer, its rather special relationship with the rest of the world (notably the underdeveloped countries), and the effects of all these on the life of the British people.
Penguin Books 1969 384 pages

Primitive rebels

Hobsbawm, E. J.
Social agitation is as essential a part of public life today as it has ever been. In Eric Hobsbawm's masterful study, Primitive Rebels , he shines a light on the origins of contemporary rebellion: Robin Hood, secret societies, revolutionary peasants, Mafiosi, Spanish Civil War anarchy, pre-industrial mobs and riots - all of which have fed in to our notions of dissent in the modern world. Coining now familiar terms such as 'social banditry', Primitive Rebels shows how Hobsbawm was decades ahead of his time, and his insightful analysis of the history of social movements is critical to our understanding of movements such as UK Uncut, Black Lives Matter and the growing international resistance to Donald Trump's presidency. Reissued with a new introduction by Owen Jones, Primitive Rebels is the perfect guide to the revolutions that shaped western civilisation, and the bandits, reformers and anarchists who have fought to change the world.
Abacus 2017 288 pages

Uncommon people: resistance, rebellion and jazz

Hobsbawm, E. J.
These 26 essays range over the history of working men and women between the late 18th century and the present day. They include Hobsbawm's pioneering studies in labour history and social protest - the formation of the British working class, labour custom and traditions, the political radicalism of 19th century shoemakers, male and female images in revolutionary movements, the machine-breakers, revolution and sex, peasants and politics, the rules of violence, the common-sense of Tom Paine. There are more recent reflections: on the May Day holiday; the Vietnam War; socialism and the avantgarde; Mario Puzo, the Mafia and the Sicilian bandit Salvatore Guiliano; and the cultural consequences of Christopher Columbus. There are tributes to some of jazz's legendary figures - Count Basie, SidneyBechet and Dike Ellington - anf the tragic blues-singer Billie Holiday.
Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1998 360 pages

Labouring men: studies in the history of labour

Hobsbawm, E. J.
The topics covered in this book can be divided into four broad groups: studies of labour conditions up to the middle of the nineteenth century; studies in the 'new trade unionism' of 1889 to 1914; studies in the late nineteenth-century revival of Socialism in Britain; and more general topics covering a wider chronological span. The common factor in this wide-ranging work is that, unlike much other work of labour history, it concentrates on the working classes as such, and on the economic and technical conditions which allowed labour movements to be effective or which prevented their effectiveness. This work is notable not only for its clarity and incisiveness, but also for the richness and variety of the material, which ranges from Marx to Methodism and from labour traditions to the machine breakers.
Weidenfeld & Nicolson 2015 401 pages

Behind the times: the decline and fall of the twentieth-century avant-gardes

Hobsbawm, E. J.
Does modern art, as the art of the past always did, "express the times, " or is it a series of willful aberrations? Do we have any way of judging its success or failure? Bypassing art criticism and art theory, Britain's foremost social historian approaches the question from an entirely new angle. Professor Hobsbawm's thesis is that, unlike writers and composers, who have to come to terms with mass production and the technology of infinite repetition, painters still cling to the unique art-object, the product of the artist's own hands. The result has been a succession of increasingly desperate "avant-gardes, " attempts to find relevance and meaning that -- irrespective of the individual artist's talent -- are doomed to failure. Eric Hobsbawm is Emeritus Professor of Economics and Social History at the University of London. An unrepentant Marxist, he has succeeded in uniting original scholarship with popular appeal, and his most recent book, The Age of Extremes, is influential in shaping the way the century is seen by both professional historians and the wider educated public.
Thames & Hudson 1998 48 pages