Reappraisals: Reflections on the Forgotten Twentieth Century - Softcover

Judt, Tony

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0143115057 ISBN 13: 9780143115052

Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group, 2009

Synopsis

We have entered an age of forgetting. Our world, we insist, is unprecedented, wholly new. The past has nothing to teach us. Drawing provocative connections between a dazzling range of subjects, from Jewish intellectuals and the challenge of evil in the recent European past to the interpretation of the Cold War and the displacement of history by heritage, the late historian Tony Judt takes us beyond what we think we know of the past to explain how we came to know it, showing how much of our history has been sacrificed in the triumph of myth-making over understanding and denial over memory. Reappraisals offers a much-needed road map back to the historical sense we urgently need.

About this title

From the Inside Flap

As Tony Judt argues persuasively in Reappraisals, we have entered an "age of forgetting." Today’s world is so utterly unlike the world of just twenty years ago that we have set aside our immediate past even before we could make sense of it. We literally don't know where we came from, and the results of this burgeoning ignorance are proving calamitous, with the clear prospect of worse to come. We have lost touch with three generations of international policy debate, social thought and public-spirited social activism. We no longer know how to discuss such concepts and we have forgotten the role once played by intellectuals in debating, transmitting and defending the ideas that shaped their time. In Reappraisals, Tony Judt resurrects key aspects of the world we have lost and reminds us how important they still are to us: now and to our hopes for the future.

Judt draws provocative connections between a dazzling range of subjects, from the history of the neglect and recovery of the Holocaust and the challenge of ‘evil’ in understanding the European past, to the rise and fall of the state in public affairs and the displacement of history by ‘heritage’.Ranging with his trademark acuity and élan from Belgium to Israel, from the memory of Marxism to the practice of foreign policy, he takes us beyond what we think we know to show us how we came to know it, and reveals how much of our history has been sacrificed in the triumph of myth-making over understanding and denial over memory. His book is a road map back to the historical sense we urgently need.

From the Back Cover

Praise for Postwar Shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize

‘He dares to expound the sum total of Europe since 1945 in a seamless narrative… This is history-writing with a human face, as well as with brainpower… It is most unlikely that Judt's achievement will be superseded soon.’ Norman Davies, Guardian

‘'Truly superb - a magnificent achievement. It is hard to imagine how a better - and morereadable - history of the emergence of today's Europe from the ashes of 1945 could ever be written...A real masterpiece.'Ian Kershaw, author of Hitler

‘A superb work of synthesis, analysis and reflection.’ Timothy Garton-Ash, TLS, Books of the Year

‘A hugely impressive work, vigorously and lucidly written... Its range is awe-inspiring.' Marina Warner, Observer, Books of the Year

‘Masterly and exhilarating... This is a splendid book to which no review can do proper justice.’ Geoffrey Wheatcroft, Spectator

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0143115057
• ISBN 13: 9780143115052
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 464