Reappraisals: Reflections on the Forgotten Twentieth Century
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Manufacturer: Penguin Press HC, The
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Average Customer Rating:   
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 909.82
EAN: 9781594201363
ISBN: 1594201366
Label: Penguin Press HC, The
Manufacturer: Penguin Press HC, The
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 464
Publication Date: 2008-04-17
Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The
Studio: Penguin Press HC, The
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Editorial Reviews:
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From one of our greatest historians and public intellectuals, reflections on a twentieth century that is turning into ancient history, when it's not being displaced by myth or forgotten entirely, with unprecedented speed and at great cost
The accelerating changes of the past generation have been accompanied by a comparably accelerated amnesia. The twentieth century has become "history" at an unprecedented rate. The world of 2007 is so utterly unlike that of even 1987, much less any earlier time, that we have lost touch with our immediate past even before we have begun to make sense of it. In less than a generation, the headlong advance of globalization, with the geographical shifts of emphasis and influence it brings in its wake, has altered the structures of thought that had been essentially unchanged since the European industrial revolution. Quite literally, we don't know where we came from.
The results have proved calamitous thus far, with the prospect of far worse. We have lost touch with a century of social thought and socially motivated social activism. We no longer know how to discuss such concepts and have forgotten the role once played by intellectuals in debating, transmitting, and defending the ideas that shaped their time. In Reappraisals, Tony Judt resurrects the key aspects of the world we have lost in order to remind us how important they still are to us now and to our hopes for the future.
Reappraisals draws provocative connections between a dazzling range of subjects, from the history of the neglect and recovery of the Holocaust and the challenge of "evil" in the understanding of the European past to the rise and fall of the "state" in public affairs and the displacement of history by "heritage." With his trademark acuity and Žlan, Tony Judt takes us beyond what we think we know to show us how we came to know it and reveals how many aspects of our history have been sacrificed in the triumph of mythmaking over understanding, collective identity over truth, and denial over memory. His book is a road map back to the historical sense we so vitally need.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Important and Interesting
Comment: Everyone who has read Tony Judt's "Postwar" knows that he is a historian of the first order, who marshals a broad array of facts in a manner that illuminates crucial trends and ironic twists in history. "Reappraisals" is not a narrative history but a collection of articles, nearly all of them book reviews. However, taken together, they throw important light on many of the most important intellectual and political developments and events of the twentieth century. Their elucidatory value derives both from Judt's vast erudition, which he always employs for clarification, never for display, and from his evaluations of the events, people, and ideas that he discusses. These evaluations are nearly always sensible, fair, and insightful. I say this even though Judt's calls himself a man of the Left, and I am a supporter of the free market.
In fact, the aspect of Judt's historical judgements that I found most interesting is how similar they are to those of libertarians and conservatives. With one exception (discussed below), Judt's harshest criticism is directed at Leftists who are unwilling to acknowledge fully the horrors of Communism. In his review of Kolakowski's "Main Currents of Marxism" (pages 129-46), he points out that these horrors were inherent in and unavoidable from the nature of Marxism. More broadly, he points out that the twentieth century has taught two crucial lessons, which no one is entitled to ignore (page 419). One is the seemingly innate propensity of the state, no matter what doctrines it espouses, to develop in a totalitarian direction. The other is that "[whether] murderous or benevolent, the state is a strikingly inefficient economic actor." The result (pages 427, 430) is that the Left no longer has an "articulated vision of a good, or even of a better, society." Without such a vision, the Left in Europe has become conservative. It often fights to maintain privileges, like price supports for agricultural products and early retirement on full pay for government employees, which are defended by well-organized blocks of voters, but inhibit the economic growth needed to supply truly necessary benefits. What are these truly necessary benefits that the state should provide? Judt says what he thinks they are, but only in general and vague terms (e.g., pages 385, 429-30). Some of his arguments are impossible to refute. For instance, he says (page 422) that the Italian government's "huge and inefficient civil service," "overstaffed public services," "discredited system of wage-price linkage," and "corrupt" institutionalized aid to southern Italy have all been necessary and even desirable because Italians have a deeply rooted cultural expectation that the state should solve social problems; and if this expectation had been thwarted, the result would have been political collapse. Not only is this argument not open to refutation, it is as conservative as an argument can be.
I mentioned that with one exception Judt's harshest criticism is directed at those of his fellow Leftists who are unwilling to acknowledge fully the horrors of Communism. It is that one exception that constitutes the only glaring defect in these essays. Even harsher than his condemnations of Communism are his condemnations of Israel. He thus is guilty of a fault that so commonly mars the judgement of Left-wing Jewish intellectuals. To take just one example, on page 390, Judt says, "Since its inception, the state of Israel has fought a number of wars of choice (indeed, the only exception was the Yom Kippur War)." But in an essay on the 1967 War, which is also reprinted in this book (pages 268-85), Judt points out (page 274) that when Egypt's president Nasser closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping, he must have known that war was inevitable. Nevertheless (page 275), Israel tried to get Britain, France, and the USA to honor their pledge to guarantee Israel's right to use the Straits of Tiran. The war started when they refused. The Arabs, who had five times more tanks than the Israelis and four times more planes, made it clear (page 276) that their goal was the complete annihilation of Israel. When the fighting started Israel's prime minister asked Jordan's king to stay out of the fighting (page 276). If Egypt would have accepted the UN's call for a cease-fire on June 6, when it was proposed, instead of waiting for June 8, Israel would not have occupied eastern Jerusalem or the West Bank (page 277). Judt's allegation that Israel chose to fight every war in which it engaged, except 1973, is even more preposterous with regard its first war. On November 29, 1947, the UN voted to partition the area between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River into two countries: Israel and an Arab country. Israel was to have less than half of that territory. Even that tiny area had approximately 650,000 Arabs, which nearly equalled the Jewish population. Nevertheless the Jewish population accepted the UN plan without reservation; and five Arab countries sent their armies to Israel to obliterate it.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Praise for 'REAPPRAISALS'
Comment: I give this book 5 stars, not because I agree with everything its author says but because it's such a good read. The book is comprised of essays published between 1997 - 2006. The first two sections contain a series of portraits of some of the most influential people of the 20th century; Koestler, Arendt, Camus and others. Tony Judt, who Christopher Hitchens calls a former 'kibbutznik', also writes a sympathetic piece on Edward Said. This is one of the reasons why he's not so kindly received in some quarters. Even though Said apparently didn't advocate political violence (in contrast with for example Sartre), he is sometimes referred to by his adversaries as the 'Professor of Terror'. Judt is also highly critical of modern-day Israel. This is sure-fire way to lower the ratings. We all know that you should not judge a book on your own political preferences but there you go.
These are the actual reappraisals, I suppose and the remainder of the book reflects on Europe, the United States and Israel since WW II. In an essay called 'The Silence of the Lambs: On the Strange Death of Liberal America', Judt laments the tacit consent by leading liberals of President Bush's 'catastrophic foreign policy'. Some intellectuals even trip over each other in order to praise the war in Iraq in particular and the GWOT (Global War On Terror) in general. The Left, as represented by Tony Blair, has lost its credibility, perhaps even its raison d'être. In order to survive, it has to shoulder its responsibility for the failures of the 20th century and reassess many of its central themes. In absence of a clear vision the Left will simply stagnate and wither away. As Judt acutely observes: 'to be on the left is to be a conservative'.
I highly recommend 'Reappraisals' to anyone interested in recent history - and in the future, however gloomy it might appear.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Stale Bread
Comment: Reappraisals is a re-packaging of essays by a group of authors I am not familiar with. I did not know this when I purchased the book. I bought it strictly based on the author's reputation and my high regard for his excellent book, Postwar.
$29.95 down the drain.
Customer Rating:
Summary: objective history?
Comment: I ran through Mr. Judt's facinating book and enjoyed most of it. For a history buff it was great. BUT his pieces on Israel are so off base as to give me heatburn. I dont know what happened to him in Israel when he visited in 1967 but it must have been an awful expierence. The chapter entiled "The Country That Wouldn't Grow Up" describes the author's state of mind not Israel's. Most chapters in the book have footnotes but the last 2 on Isreal don't. For a historian he has committed the worsts sin, loss of objectivity. One example,he describes the terrible anti-Semitism in 20th century Europe in other chapters but then when describing Europe's reaction to Israel since 1967 he claims it doesn't exist.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Very Good
Comment: This is a collection of essays from the historian most famous for " Postwar" a history of Europe from 1945 to the present. Judt's earlier book was very good and explained the establishment of the European welfare state as a reaction to the Second World War. Politicians of both sides wanted to ensure that the underlying causes which led to Fascism and Communism never arose in their countries so that they tried to establish mechanisms to ensure that a decent life was available for all. One of the points Judt made was the key role of conservative and Christian democratic parties in the creation of modern Europe.
In this book he is not a historian but an essayist strongly arguing for the left. He covers a number of topics but his key message is that the end of utopian models of government does not mean a end to the role of government in society. Government still has the power to solve problems and to shape societies to so that breakdown and dislocation do not occur. He is clearly a supporter of the welfare state although his intelligence is such that any of his positions are hedged rather than dogmatic. In facing problems there are no simple answers.
Some of the essays are rather strident attacks on Israel. He appears to have some first hand experience living in Israel in his youth. His attacks are rather simple. He says that Israel is a strong modern state which keeps large numbers of Arabs living in Bantustans. It uses collective punishments and violates international law. Whilst doing these things it trumpets a ideology that it is a state facing extinction and its actions are simply in self defence. It is also the only democracy in an area in which autocracy is the norm.
All of his essays about Israel have been stridently attacked in America where support for Israel is strong. Ironically it would seem that they have been better received in Israel were there is strong debate about how the future should play out. From the point of view of a reader he is able to articulate the arguments around the issue and meld it with the historical record.
Coming from a family of Marxists he is aware of the limitations of it as an ideology and what a disaster it has been. His previous work has been some of the most articulate criticisms of modern communism and in this work he deals not only with it but with its fellow travellers.
All of the essays in the book, although previously published are first rate and readable as well. Thoroughly recommended.
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