
← The Harvard Brief21 Aug · 1 h 34 min
Emile Chabal, "The Age of Hobsbawm: The Life of a Revolutionary Historian" (Harvard UP, 2026)
Eric Hobsbawm (1917–2012) was one of the foremost European
intellectuals of the twentieth century. He published hundreds of
articles on modern history and culture, and his books became canonical
works and bestsellers on both sides of the Atlantic. His crystal-clear
writing, vast erudition, and ability to make his Marxist analysis
digestible to a wide audience brought him worldwide renown. Yet Hobsbawm
was no academic hermit. Through his globetrotting journalism, he was
embedded in an extraordinary web of politicians, activists, and fellow
intellectuals across Europe, South Asia, and the Americas, including
Manmohan Singh, Che Guevara, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Fernand Braudel,
E. P. Thompson, Arno Mayer, and Salvador Allende.
In The Age of Hobsbawm: The Life of a Revolutionary Historian (Harvard University Press, 2026), Emile Chabal