The Age of Extremes Book by Eric Hobsbawm

The Age of Extremes by Eric Hobsbawm analyzes the "short twentieth century" (1914–1991), framing it as a highly volatile era bookended by the outbreak of World War I and the collapse of the Soviet Union. The book divides this period into three distinct eras: the devastating Age of Catastrophe, the prosperous post-WWII Golden Age, and the ideological unraveling of the Landslide crisis. Writing from a Marxist perspective, Hobsbawm delivers a sweeping synthesis of the political, economic, and cultural forces that fundamentally transformed global human society.