Description
The 20th century stands as the age of ideas, a time in which, for better or worse, the thoughts of a few imposed themselves on the lives of many. Of unprecedented clarity and lucidity, Tony Judt's latest book, one of the most incisive contemporary historians, is destined to become a classic of modern thought. Thinking about the 20th century is at the same time a history book, a biography and a treatise on ethics. It is a history of modern political ideas in the West. But it is also the intellectual biography of Judt, born in London just after the cataclysm of World War II and the Holocaust, when communism strengthened its power in Eastern Europe. The exceptional nature of this work is revealed in its very structure: a series of intimate conversations with his friend the historian Timothy Snyder in which Judt, with astonishing eloquence and erudition, rescues the thinkers who have shaped the world we live in, presenting their triumphs and failures. It is, finally, a reflection on the need for historical perspective and moral considerations in the transformation of our society. By recovering the best of the intellectual life of the 20th century, opens the way to a morality for the 21st century. This is a book about the past but it is also a book about the kind of future we should aspire to..
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