Reappraisals

Reflections on the Forgotten 20th Century

De: Tony Judt

Narrado por: James Adams

The accelerating changes of the past generation have been accompanied by a similarly accelerated amnesia. The 20th century has become "history" at an unprecedented rate. The world of 2007 was so utterly unlike that of even 1987, much less any earlier time, that we have lost touch with our immediate past even before we have begun to make sense of it - and the results are proving calamitous.

In less than a generation, the headlong advance of globalization has altered structures of thought that had been essentially unchanged since the European industrial revolution. As a result, we have lost touch with a century of social thought and socially motivated activism. In the 24 essays in Reappraisals, Judt resurrects the key aspects of the world we have lost to remind us how important they still are to us now and to our future.

©2008 Tony Judt (P)2008 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Reseñas de la Crítica

"As a fascinating exploration of the world we have recently lost - for good or bad, or both - this collection...cannot be bested." ( Publishers Weekly)

essential

wonderful full of thought and indispensible information

Irreplaceable

What did you love best about Reappraisals?

Brilliant analyses, mordant excoriations of the militarists self-justifying their Vietnam war, great critique of Israel

How could the performance have been better?

It's the wrong reader - the plummy British accent makes Judt sound like like a Mandarin, pronouncing disdainfully on mere mortals.His mispronounciation of all the Hebrew names compounds the tone of an authority impossible remote from his subjects.

A Deep Well of Information and Opinion

I wasn't familiar with Judt before reading this book, and I had only a passing knowledge of many of the featured people.
The essays seem somewhat Judeo-centric, but they are fascinating and they have introduced me to people and philosophies I'll enjoy pursuing.
The essays on the more recent time periods (newer than 2003) seemed hollow, considering the economic and political changes of the past 18 months. I enjoyed all the others.

Profound reflections on history and politics.

What did you love best about Reappraisals?

The late Tony Judt was the most eloquent, balanced and perceptive historian of modern Europe we had. He was also a uniquely well-informed and lucid political commentator on issues ranging from the Six-Day War to the ideal role of the state. Can't recommend this highly enough.

Exceptional. A pure intellectual gift. It makes one’s brain bloom.

Reading Tony Judy’s essays in REAPPRAISALS is an exceptional delight. These essays, more specifically reviews mostly from The New York Times Review of Books from the late 1990 through the 2000s, address a wide range of issues that Judt adds his intellectual insights. This was one of the most stimulating and enjoyable nonfiction works I have read recently. Additionally, James Adams adds his warm sophisticated British baritone for which it is well suited, well modulated with a pace that’s easy to follow and understand. Everything comes together in this book: clear and engaging writing, intellectually stimulating analysis and argument, and a well performed narration.

Too brilliant!

Tony Judt has a supremely gifted mind and this book is spectacular. Revisiting the issues from across the century is a smart way at. A brilliant walk down memory lane with contemporary analysis. Mr. Judt makes the work very east ygy play.
A great book. In fact, it’s most definitely the most reflective of Mr. Judt’s endnote:

Uneven collection of book reviews

Surprised and disappointed that this was a collection of book reviews. Judt is excellent as always, however. Just makes for an oddly disjointed collection of thoughts, which the book’s blurb did not make clear.

Superb. Insightful essays, Performance to match

Judt, a European-born New Yorker and academic, analyzes the failings of his fellow leftists in clear-eyed essays. There are 24 essays, most of which appeared as extended reviews in The New York Review of Books.

He blames the left for their unwillingness to acknowledge that the only examples of communist governments have all taken the form of dictatorships. He cites leftist intellectual willingness to make exceptions for The Greater Good and blindness to Stalin--even when presented with proof--and he blames his fellow leftist intellectuals for an unwillingness to consider that yes, there were communists in the US State Department, and that while McCarthy was wrong about everything else, he may have been right about this.

Judt was on a kibbutz during the Six Day War, when Jordan, Syria and Egypt moved to crush Israel. Israel won not by a shofar, but when the Egyptian air force was burned into the desert. He acknowledges the cost of Zionism--Israeli land gained is Arab land lost is peace lost--and he knows the answer is Land For Peace. In an essay on Edward Said, he talks about Palestinian weakness and ineptitude in face of Israeli duplicity, and later, the inevitable charges of anti-Semitism that follow criticism of the settlements, and the inability of American Jews to see Israel through the eyes of the rest of the world, and the Israeli's inability to create a country that can stand without America's help.

Judt is not perfect. There is some score-settling among fellow leftists that comes across as Paris cafe bickering.

In his review of William Bundy's "Tangled Web" he excoriates Nixon and Kissinger's destructive narcissistic personal foreign policy--cutting out State and CIA--lauds Shuttle Diplomacy, but doesn't see that they have the same roots. The opening to China is seen as brilliant in of itself, but Bundy (and Judt) take at face value the Soviet/Russian claim that the overtures to China had nothing to do with the Soviet summit and SALT treaty.

Finally, his review of "The Cold War: A New History" (2005) by John Lewis Gaddis (who won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Biography), is worth the price of the book. Gaddis's book is eviscerated as shallow and narrow, a jingoistic account of a victory that is an insight to American policymakers that made me wonder if the publisher wasn't FOX News Books. But Judt's view is European, and Gaddis's is American, and we return to the blind spot of the Left: nuclear war. Under the threat of mutually assured destruction, the Right races to the expedient self-serving simple choice, and everyone suffers.

Judt ends with the spectre haunting the West — the spectre of nationalism.

The performance is excellent. Judt's forté is France, so there is more than the usual mot juste. While it is normally just an affectation, like a pipe, pipe cleaner, tobacco, tobacco pouch, tamper and the outsized search for The Ashtray so we can Ring It Like A Schoolbell, in an audio book it transcends affectation to annoyance.

give us more

Tony Judt is revealed to be one of the most thoughtful, incisive writers on the history and politics of the last 100 years. Let us have more of Tony.

Disappointed

following on from the excellent book on post war Europe, this niche story was a disappointment