The Age of Revolution — Eric Hobsbawm

Hobsbawm's first volume of his trilogy on the long nineteenth century covers the period 1789 to 1848, treating the French and Industrial Revolutions as twin transformations that together remade the world. The book is written from a Marxist perspective that is never hidden and sometimes genuinely illuminating — particularly on the relationship between economic and political change, and on how class interests shaped both. Its account of nationalism as a revolutionary force, of the new industrial working class as a historical actor, and of the defeat of 1848 remains one of the most ambitious syntheses in modern historical writing.

'One of the most important history books of the twentieth century.' — Eric Foner. First published in 1962, continuously in print, translated into dozens of languages. 'Hobsbawm's trilogy is indispensable for understanding the modern world.' — Tony Judt