Eric Hobsbawm, one of the brightest and most original historians of our time, was born almost a hundred years ago and grew up in Vienna and Berlin. He was in the perfect position to observe the coming era of a titanic social and artistic change. As the 20th century progressed, the urban culture of the fin de siècle was confronted with countless new movements and ideologies, from communism and extreme nationalism to dadaism and the emergence of information technology. In "The Age of Extremes," Hobsbawm, with his characteristic nerve, unfolds before our eyes a fragmented century. He examines the conditions that created the blossoming of the belle époque, while simultaneously containing the seed of its decomposition: paternalistic capitalism, globalization, and the emergence of a mass consumer society. With passion, but always without sentimentality, he comfortably navigates the entire spectrum of his subject: he records the death of the golden age of the "free intellectual" and explores the lives of forgotten but important figures, analyzes the relationship between art and totalitarianism, and dissects phenomena as diverse as surrealism, women's emancipation, and the myth of the American cowboy.

Written with rich imagination and exceptional skill, "The Age of Extremes" is the last book by one of the greatest thinkers of our time.