Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Thinking the Twentieth Century, Judt, Snyder

The co-authors of this book are Tony Judt and Timothy Snyder. The book is written as a discussion between Tony Judt and Timothy Snyder. It is obviously a very left wing view of history, but it is a lively and interesting discussion. However, the discussion is about mostly Europe. It does touch on US, but mainly it is a discussion of Europe, so the scope is rather narrow.

I had not known about the Europe too much in the 20th century and the fact that it took until 1970 for Western Europe to get back to the same level of prosperity that they had in 1914. Basically, Western Europe suffered a 60 year decline marked by 2 world wars and unprecedented economic depression.

The book also dwells a bit on the European Jewish question. Tony Judt is Jewish and he grew up in Europe so this is not a surprising subject. Mostly nothing in the book is new and surprising to me. However, I have read a lot of history, so this maybe why.

The Guardian has a great review of this book .

See Timothy Snyder talk about this book at Cornell University. This lecture is part of a series of talks at the university called Foreign Policy Distinguished Speaker Series at Einaudi Center's. It is rather long at 1 hour and 20 minutes. Timothy Snyder starts to speak about 8 minutes into this video. Timothy Snyder's lecture last until just after 51 minutes and then there is questions and answers period.

There is an interview with New York Times Journalist Tony Judt . It is quite interesting and is just over 7 minutes long. There is also an interesting question and answer period at Boston College in 2007.

On my website is how to find this book on Amazon if you care to purchase it. See Judt. Also, this book review and other books I have reviewed are on my website at Book Reviews.

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