Eric Hobsbawm's age of contradictions

For most academics, professional success extends to citations and conference invites. Eric Hobsbawm was different. His towering Ages series of books remains among the most celebrated and widely read works of historical scholarship to have been published in this or any era. Beginning in 1962, with The Age of Revolution, and comprising four volumes spanning from the French Revolution to the fall of the Berlin Wall, they have been eagerly consumed not only in his native Britain but across the world. Translated into dozens of languages — The Age of Extremes has sold an almost unbelievable 265,000 copies in Brazil alone — they helped make Hobsbawm a global celebrity. It is difficult today to think of any comparable figure, not least another historian: a scholar who, as well as producing a numbe