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Reappraisals

Reflections on the Forgotten Twentieth Century

Author Tony Judt
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$30.00 US
Penguin Adult HC/TR | Penguin Books
5.49"W x 8.44"H x 0.99"D   | 15 oz | 28 per carton
On sale Mar 31, 2009 | 464 Pages | 9780143115052
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“Exhilarating . . . brave and forthright.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Perhaps the greatest single collection of thinking on the political, diplomatic, social, and cultural history of the past century.” —Forbes

We have entered an age of forgetting. Our world, we insist, is unprecedented, wholly new. The past has nothing to teach us. 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 and the displacement of history by heritage, the late historian Tony Judt takes us beyond what we think we know of the past to explain how we came to know it, showing how much of our history has been sacrificed in the triumph of myth—making over understanding and denial over memory. Reappraisals offers a much-needed road map back to the historical sense we urgently need.

Judt's book, Ill Fares the Land, republished in 2021 featuring a new preface by bestselling author of Between the World and Me and The Water Dancer, Ta-Nehisi Coates.
“Exhilarating . . . brave and forthright.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Perhaps the greatest single collection of thinking on the political, diplomatic, social, and cultural history of the past century.” —Forbes

“By turns fascinating [and] edifying . . . Judt is one of our foremost historians of Europe, an elegant writer and subtle thinker.” —Los Angeles Times
© John R. Rifkin

Tony Judt (1948-2010) was educated at King’s College, Cambridge, and l’École Normale Supérieure, Paris, and taught at Cambridge, Oxford, and Berkeley. He was the Erich Maria Remarque Professor of European Studies at New University and the director of the Remarque Institute, which he founded in 1995. Among other books, Judt was the author of Thinking the Twentieth Century, The Memory Chalet, When the Facts Change (edited by Jennifer Homans), Reappraisals, and Postwar, which was one of The New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of 2005 and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

View titles by Tony Judt
ReappraisalsAcknowledgments

Introduction: The World We Have Lost

Part One: The Heart of Darkness

Chapter I: Arthur Koestler, the Exemplary Intellectual
Chapter II: The Elementary Truths of Primo Levi
Chapter III: The Jewish Europe of Manes Sperber
Chapter IV: Hannah Arendt and Evil

Part Two: The Politics of Intellectual Engagement

Chapter V: Albert Camus: "The best man in France"
Chapter VI: Elucubrations: The "Marxism" of Louis Althusser
Chapter VII: Eric Hobsbawm and the Romance of Communism
Chapter VIII: Goodbye to All That? Leszek Kotakowski and the Marxist Legacy
Chapter IX: A "Pope of Ideas"? John Paul II and the Modern World
Chapter X: Edward Said: The Rootless Cosmopolitan

Part Three: Lost in Transition: Places and Memories

Chapter XI: The Catastrophe: The Fall of France, 1940
Chapter XII: A la recherche du temps perdu: France and Its Pasts
Chapter XIII: The Gnome in the Garden: Tony Blair and Britain's "Heritage"
Chapter XIV: The Stateless State: Why Belgium Matters
Chapter XV: Romania between History and Europe
Chapter XVI: Dark Victory: Israel's Six-Day War
Chapter XVII: The Country That Wouldn't Grow Up

Part Four: The American (Half-) Century

Chapter XVIII: An American Tragedy? The Case of Whittaker Chambers
Chapter XIX: The Crisis: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Cuba
Chapter XX: The Illusionist: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy
Chapter XXI: Whose Story Is It? The Cold War in Retrospect
Chapter XXII: The Silence of the Lambs: On the Strange Death of Liberal America
Chapter XXIII: The Good Society: Europe vs. America

Envoi: The Social Question Redivivus

Publication Credits
Index

About

“Exhilarating . . . brave and forthright.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Perhaps the greatest single collection of thinking on the political, diplomatic, social, and cultural history of the past century.” —Forbes

We have entered an age of forgetting. Our world, we insist, is unprecedented, wholly new. The past has nothing to teach us. 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 and the displacement of history by heritage, the late historian Tony Judt takes us beyond what we think we know of the past to explain how we came to know it, showing how much of our history has been sacrificed in the triumph of myth—making over understanding and denial over memory. Reappraisals offers a much-needed road map back to the historical sense we urgently need.

Judt's book, Ill Fares the Land, republished in 2021 featuring a new preface by bestselling author of Between the World and Me and The Water Dancer, Ta-Nehisi Coates.

Praise

“Exhilarating . . . brave and forthright.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Perhaps the greatest single collection of thinking on the political, diplomatic, social, and cultural history of the past century.” —Forbes

“By turns fascinating [and] edifying . . . Judt is one of our foremost historians of Europe, an elegant writer and subtle thinker.” —Los Angeles Times

Author

© John R. Rifkin

Tony Judt (1948-2010) was educated at King’s College, Cambridge, and l’École Normale Supérieure, Paris, and taught at Cambridge, Oxford, and Berkeley. He was the Erich Maria Remarque Professor of European Studies at New University and the director of the Remarque Institute, which he founded in 1995. Among other books, Judt was the author of Thinking the Twentieth Century, The Memory Chalet, When the Facts Change (edited by Jennifer Homans), Reappraisals, and Postwar, which was one of The New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of 2005 and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

View titles by Tony Judt

Table of Contents

ReappraisalsAcknowledgments

Introduction: The World We Have Lost

Part One: The Heart of Darkness

Chapter I: Arthur Koestler, the Exemplary Intellectual
Chapter II: The Elementary Truths of Primo Levi
Chapter III: The Jewish Europe of Manes Sperber
Chapter IV: Hannah Arendt and Evil

Part Two: The Politics of Intellectual Engagement

Chapter V: Albert Camus: "The best man in France"
Chapter VI: Elucubrations: The "Marxism" of Louis Althusser
Chapter VII: Eric Hobsbawm and the Romance of Communism
Chapter VIII: Goodbye to All That? Leszek Kotakowski and the Marxist Legacy
Chapter IX: A "Pope of Ideas"? John Paul II and the Modern World
Chapter X: Edward Said: The Rootless Cosmopolitan

Part Three: Lost in Transition: Places and Memories

Chapter XI: The Catastrophe: The Fall of France, 1940
Chapter XII: A la recherche du temps perdu: France and Its Pasts
Chapter XIII: The Gnome in the Garden: Tony Blair and Britain's "Heritage"
Chapter XIV: The Stateless State: Why Belgium Matters
Chapter XV: Romania between History and Europe
Chapter XVI: Dark Victory: Israel's Six-Day War
Chapter XVII: The Country That Wouldn't Grow Up

Part Four: The American (Half-) Century

Chapter XVIII: An American Tragedy? The Case of Whittaker Chambers
Chapter XIX: The Crisis: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Cuba
Chapter XX: The Illusionist: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy
Chapter XXI: Whose Story Is It? The Cold War in Retrospect
Chapter XXII: The Silence of the Lambs: On the Strange Death of Liberal America
Chapter XXIII: The Good Society: Europe vs. America

Envoi: The Social Question Redivivus

Publication Credits
Index

Other Books by this Author

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