Description:

Tony Judt is on e of today's leading historians and thinkers. Winner of the Hannah Arendt Prize in 2007, his previous book, Postwar, was hailed as "monumental . . . a tour de force"by Foreign Affairs, among other leading publications. In Reappraisals, he persuasively argues that we have entered an "age of forgetting." 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 to the displacement of history by heritage, Judt takes us beyond what we think we know of the past to explain how we came to know it, and shows how much of our history has been sacrificed in the triumph of myth-making over understanding and denial over memory.

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Historian and political commentator Judt warns against the temptation to look back upon the twentieth century as an age of political extremes, of tragic mistakes and wrongheaded choices; an age of delusion from which we have now, thankfully, emerged. In this collection of 24 previously printed essays (nearly all from the New York Review of Books and the New Republic), Judt, whose recent book Postwar was a Pulitzer finalist, pleads with readers to remember that the past never completely disappears and that the coming century is as fraught with dangers as the last. Buttressing his argument, Judt draws upon an impressively broad array of subjects. He begins by describing the eclipse of intellectuals as a public force (for instance, the steep decline in Arthur Koestler's reputation) before reminding his audience of the immense power of ideas by discussing the now inexplicable attractions of Marxism in the 20th century. In the book's penultimate section, Judt examines the rise of the state in the politics and economics of Western nations before finally tackling the United States, its foreign policy and the fate of liberalism. As a fascinating exploration of the world we have recently lost—for good or bad, or both—this collection, despite its lack of new content, cannot be bested. (Apr. 21)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

A collection of book reviews with a sprinkling of essays, this volume collects the praises and pans of historian Judt (Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945, 2005). Reprised largely from the New York Review of Books and the London Review of Books and including lengthy treatments addressed to a highbrow audience, they cover works and biographies related to twentieth-century history that were published in the past decade. A dozen and a half in all, they encompass the spate of titles about Communists (historian Eric Hobsbawm), ex-Communists (Arthur Koestler and Whittaker Chambers), and the cold war. A decidedly declarative writer, Judt advances his views like an experienced intellectual fencer, although his palpable sense of proprietorship over the subjects tends to reduce the author in question to a launching platform for Judt’s opinions. These include negative perspectives on Tony Blair, U.S. foreign policy, and Israel. Whether lauding or loathing, Judt proves provocative. --Gilbert Taylor