Eric Hobsbawm, the history man

Eric Hobsbawm's writing room … 'May his books be read for many years to come.'
Photograph: Eamonn McCabe for the Guardian

È stato lui ad inventare il termine "secolo breve" per definire il Novecento, a partire dal 1914 al 1991, caduta dell'Unione sovietica. Lo studioso marxista aveva scelto per il suo omonimo saggio due date spartiacque per concentrare gli avvenimenti del XX secolo: il 1914, scoppio della Prima guerra mondiale, e il 1991, dissoluzione dell'Unione Sovietica dopo la caduta del Muro di Berlino. LEGGI TUTTO...

Eric Hobsbawm – a historian's historian: l'opera di Eric Hobsbawm commentata sul "The Guardian"

Eric Hobsbawm, What comes next?, "The Guardian", 10 aprile 2009

The 20th century is well behind us, but we have not yet learned to live in the 21st, or at least to think in a way that fits it. That should not be as difficult as it seems, because the basic idea that dominated economics and politics in the last century has patently disappeared down the plughole of history. This was the way of thinking about modern industrial economies, or for that matter any economies, in terms of two mutually exclusive opposites: capitalism or socialism. TO BE CONTINUED...