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Reappraisals: Reflections on the Forgotten Twentieth Century |  | Author: Tony Judt
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Category: Book
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Rating:  17 reviews
Media: Paperback
Edition: Reprint
Pages: 464
Number Of Items: 1
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Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.4 x 1.2
ISBN: 0143115057
Dewey Decimal Number: 320
EAN: 9780143115052
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Product 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.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 17
 Very Good June 2, 2008
Tom Munro (Melbourne, Victoria Australia)
40 out of 42 found this review helpful
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.
Praise for 'REAPPRAISALS' July 16, 2008
N. Anderberg (the Netherlands)
20 out of 20 found this review helpful
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.
Insightful, Profound and Important May 20, 2008
Dennis Loh (USA)
18 out of 22 found this review helpful
This book is not an easy reading to get through as it is a compilation of Tony Judt's essays (mostly book reviews). It took me some careful note-taking and re-reading most of the chapters to "comprehend" to my satisfaction what Judt is trying to convey. The comprehension at the end was worth all the efforts I put in. It is similar to the experience in scientific discovery when a simple hypothesis explains all of what appeared to be disjointed, disparate data points. To me, Judt is advising us to be aware of the inherent biases each writer brings to the table as well as the cultural milieu in which he/she lived. Furthermore, he warns us that there are different levels of "truths" that writers address. Judt, of course, tries to insist that the role of a true intellectual is to address universal truth/standard and the concept of good/evil that can be applied as uniformly as possible. He abhors the selective use what is right and proper based on convenience and one's partiality. Thus,for example, I surmise that most Israel supporter will dislike the message in this book. On the other hand, if one wants to be challenged to "reappraise" conventional wisdom based on the "popular" Western intellectual viewpoints, the book provides a remarkable starting point. One easily forgets while reading books (primarily in the English language) in the American and British circles, the overwhelming tilt of American/British bias--particularly on controversial topics i.e. Israel. As someone who reads regularly in Chinese and Japanese language press in addition to English, the discrepancy is obvious. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn about contemporary Western biases, the apparent paucity of intellectual integrity, the presence of strong institutional pressures, and apparent lack of courage on many writers' part to speak up and address universal truths/standards. It seems that Tony Judt is screaming to me the motto of my alma mater, Cal Tech: "Truth Shall Make You Free" but many (in the US especially) are scared of the prevailing wind.
Our contemporary George Orwell? August 23, 2009
R. M. Peterson (Santa Fe, NM)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Let me first dispense with the weakness of this book: It is a collection of 23 articles by Tony Judt that were published between 1994 and 2006 in several journals -- many in the form of expanded book reviews and the vast majority being in either "The New York Review of Books" or "The New Republic". Although Judt makes an effort to bring them all together under one tent as, to quote the sub-title, "Reflections on the Forgotten Twentieth Century", that's a pretty lame and generally unsuccessful effort. The book has the usual weaknesses of virtually any collection of essays on wide-ranging topics published over a dozen years: there is, inevitably, a measure of disjointedness, and the stronger essays lose some of their punch and distinctiveness from having to rub shoulders with the weaker or more esoteric ones.
But this weakness is, for me, more than offset by the strengths of the book. Tony Judt is an independent, clear-headed thinker, who writes knowledgeably and lucidly on a wide range of contemporary subjects of an historical/political nature. Few -- correction, probably no one -- will agree with him on every point. His views on Israel are particularly likely to raise hackles, at least here in the U.S. (They led "The New Republic" to treat him as persona non grata.) But his opinions are well-grounded in history and well thought out. They are not, most emphatically, the received strictures of an ideologue -- which, of course, is what irritates so many who fancy themselves liberals about Judt. Then again, what George Orwell said about nationalists is equally applicable to ideologues: "If one harbors anywhere in one's mind a nationalistic loyalty or hatred, certain facts, though in a sense known to be true, are inadmissble."
Tony Judt is cut from the same cloth as Orwell. He does not write quite as straightforwardly, and I don't know if his empathy for the common man is as intense, but his historical knowledge is deeper and broader. I recommend REAPPRAISALS, unreservedly, to anyone who cares about the current global political landscape and (a) is uninvested, psychologically or intellectually, in any particular ideological or nationalistic perspective, or (b) is sincerely willing to have their ideological or nationalistic beliefs challenged.
Challenging, polemical May 1, 2009
Librum (CA, USA)
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
A very thought-provoking compilation of essays drawn from the pages of the New Republic, the New York Review of Books, the London Review of Books, and other esteemed publications. The range of TJ's learning is impressive; his critiques of everyone from Henry Kissinger to Hannah Arendt, incisive and interesting. There's a fair amount of repetitive material in Reappraisals -- the peril of any essay collection -- but this is a minor criticism. Reppraisals is a very fine book.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 17
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