BDL on EH

[Brad De Long]

>[Rob Schaap writes from a non-sub'd address]
>
>G'day Brad,
>
>Quoth you:
>
>>I have to confess that the _Age of Extremes_ *annoyed* me. It annoyed
>>me because Hobsbawm broke temporal sequence: he moved the discussion
>>of Stalin far away from his narrative of interwar Europe. He did this
>>because he did not focus on Stalin until sometime after 1956. Thus in
>>terms of Hobsbawm's personal experiential timeline, the nature of
>>Stalin's rule falls after successful social-democratic reconstruction
>>in post-WWII western Europe.
>
>Well, Hobsbawm is not a great one for singling out individuals in explaining
>history...

I think you mistake my point. For Hobsbawm, Hitler's belongs to the 
thirties and Stalin's tyranny belongs to the late 1950s. So that's 
how he wrote the book.

But I think that tears interwar European history out of its rightful 
shape, and greatly damages the book.

Brad DeLong