Thinking the Twentieth Century

Where unparalleled historian Tony Judt’s Postwar redefined the history of modern Europe, Thinking the Twentieth Century, his final work, unites the century’s conflicted intellectual history into a single soaring narrative. The twentieth century comes to life as the age of ideas—a time when, for good or for ill, the thoughts of the few reigned over the lives of many. Judt presents the triumphs and the failures of public intellectuals, adeptly extracting the essence of their ideas. Spanning the entire era and all currents of thought, this is a triumphant tour de force that restores clarity to the classics of modern thought. Traversing the century’s complexities with ease, Judt and Snyder revive both thoughts and thinkers, guiding us through the debates that made our world. In restoring the best of the intellectual life of the twentieth century, this book charts a pathway for moral life in the twenty-first.