Interesting Times: A Twentieth-Century Life

Hitler came to power on Eric Hobsbawm's way home from school in Berlin and the fall of the Soviet Union ended during his seminar in New York. He translated for Che Guevara in Havana, had Christmas dinner with a Soviet master spy in Budapest and an evening at home with Mahalia Jackson in Chicago. He saw the body of Stalin, started the modern history of banditry and is (presumably) the only Marxist asked to collaborate with the inventor of the Mars Bar.

Hobsbawm's life is almost contemporary with the terrible "short twentieth century" about which he has written his most widely read book 'The Age Of Extremes 1914-1991'. Multilingual, sceptical and endlessly curious, he has made his way around the world of his lifetime, committed to and trying to understand the "living in interesting times" of the Chinese curse.

This is a passionate travelogue through the past which is another country, where they do things differently, and how it became the world of 2001: Britain, the countries and culture of Europe, the USA, Latin America, India and the Far East.