The Age of Revolution: 1789-1848

Hobsbawm is truly a genius and at the head of his field as a Marxist historian. I would highly recommend this for anyone studying or interested in history and/or comparative politics, his books are full of detail, analysis, and trademark British humor.This book, alongside Hobsbawm's other works, is unabridged in its detail, telling the truth of revolutionary history without the nationalistic sugarcoating and propaganda so prevalent in other works and textbooks.

Si quiere conocer en detalle, de manera amena y agradable, la gran influencia que para la humanidad tuvieron la revolución francesa de 1789 y la revolución industrial de la Gran Bretaña, la lectura de este libro se convierte en una necesidad. Hobsbawm, historiador erudito ingles del siglo XX, relata para el lector común los hechos que precedieron estas revoluciones, los eventos que las motivaron, las consecuencias que produjeron y en paralelo la importancia de sus grandes hombres, de los que se destaca de manera evidente Napolen, el movimiento girondino, las ideas evolucionistas y los grandes pensadores, en especial franceses y británicos, ( sin dejar atras a los alemanes en particular Marx, Hegel y Goethe) que cambiaron de manera definitiva la forma de ver y actuar de nuestra civilización.Lo recomiendo ampliamente.Se convertirá en un excelente referente para analizar con calma tanto cambio influenciado en disciplinas y culturas, el arte, la religion, la ciencia, la industrialización del mundo al pasar de una sociedad campesina, la multiplicación de la pobreza..... y de la riqueza, las raíces del nacionalismo y de los países, los deseos de paz después de una revolución, en fin la gran transformación que se desprende de los principios de la revolución: Libertad, Igualdad, Fraternidad.

Very good history of the period 1789 to 1848. While the focus is primarily on Europe, Prof. Hobsbawm covers America and the Far East as well.

First off, I should say that this book is a good overview of western European history for the time period it covers. I liked it and enjoyed it and learned a lot from it. However, I can't help thinking about what the book is not, and that frustrates me. Hobsbawm wrote several books in the same vein as his career advanced and he did get better as a historian and as a writer. I read those books before reading this one so I felt a little let down stylistically.I'm torn on a further critique. The book is either too narrow in focus (ie, the wonderful and timeless charge of `eurocentricism'), or oddly enough not focused enough. On this charge I think that perhaps companion volumes should have been made - revolution in France and Revolution in factories. I say this because it was not too long ago that I read E. P. Thompson's fine, exhaustive and brick-like Making of the English Working Class which is a great book and a great point of comparison because it covers roughly equal time periods (Thompson goes earlier than 1789 and stops before 1848) and it was written around the same time as this book. Overall the text was perfect, yet it was wanting.

Not an easy read but certainly worth the effort. Unsurpassed blending of the issues of the era.

This is good book to read and understand how French Revolution and 1848 European Revolution shaped Karl Marx theory of communism, and how the workers revolution took place in Russia as world divided between East and West political economy of capitalism vs communism.

The content of the book is very interesting, but the quality of this paper-back edition is poor. The printing characters are small, thick, and densely packed. This edition lacks the numerous pictures of the original hard-back version. I bought this book to gift to a teenager who likes history, but this edition is too uninviting for any reader, let alone a young one. I ended up giving him my old hard-back edition from the 1960s.

I wanted only for hobby, I already knew what I was buying, and it's a good edition.