Eric Hobsbawm

Historian of the ages

When Eric Hobsbawm died on Oct. 1 at 95, he was eulogized even by his ideological foes as the greatest historian of his time. Though the Cambridge-educated Briton was an unrepentant Communist who refused to quit the party even after the horrors of Stalin became clear, his work showed little trace of dogma. As a historian, he was interested less in the actions of great men than in the lives of ordinary people. Their struggles are at the heart of his most famous work, the best-selling four-volume Ages series chronicling the period from the French Revolution to 1991. Hobsbawm's histories, always...

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