How To Change The World

This collection of 26 essays range over the history of working men and women between the late 18th century and the present day, and brings back into print a selection of this celebrated historian's pioneering studies into labour history, together with more recent reflections previously unpublished in book form.Eric Hobsbawm's penetrating essays on labour history and social protest opened up a new field of study and set standards of wide-ranging, evocative, incisive analysis. Essays in this collection include the formation of the British working class; labour custom and traditions; the political radicalism of 19th century shoemakers; male and female images in revolutionary movements; revolution and sex; peasants and politics; and the common-sense of Tom Paine. More recent essays include meditations on the May Day holiday; the Vietnam War; socialism and the avantgarde; Mario Puzo, the Mafia and the Sicilian bandit Salvatore Giuliano; and the cultural consequences of Christopher Columbus. Throughout these essays runs a passionate concern for the lives and struggles of ordinary men and women - uncommon people, all of them.

BANDITS is a study of the social bandit or bandit-rebel - robbers and outlaws who are not regarded by public opinion as simple criminals, but rather as champions of social justice, as avengers or as primitive resistance fighters. Whether Balkan haiduks, Indian dacoits or Brazilian congaceiros, their spectacular exploits have been celebrated and preserved in story and myth. Some are only know to their fellow countrymen; others like Rob Roy, Robin Hood and Jesse James are famous throughout the world. First published in 1969, Bandits inspired a new field of historical study: bandit history. This substantially extended and revised new edition appears at a time when the disintegration of state power has reintroduced fertile conditions for banditry once again to flourish in many parts of the world.

Eric Hobsbawm's AGE OF EXTREMES was a remarkable phenomenon, a book of serious and challenging historical analysis that became a worldwide bestseller. Now, THE NEW CENTURY continues Hobsbawm's analysis of our twentieth century, asking crucial questions about our inheritance from the century of conflict and its meanings for the years to come. Looking back over the last decade to learn something of the new era, Hobsbawm finds the distinction between internal and international conflicts and between state of war and state of peace disappearing. He goes on to analyse the crisis of the multi-ethnic state and shows the distortions of history involved in the creation of its myths. He expresses his anxiety over the system of international relations between states that have so far ruled by colonialism and nuclear terror. Hobsbawm then assesses the impact that a popular global culture has had on every aspect of life, from happiness and social hierarchy to nutrition and the environment. Published this year in dozens of countries throughout the world, THE NEW CENTURY is a concise summary of the thinking of one of the pre-eminent historians.

The first and best, major treatment of the crucial years 1848-1875, a penetrating analysis of the rise of capitalism throught the world.In the 1860s a new word entered the economic and political vocabulary of the world: 'capitalism'. The global triumph of capitalism is the major theme of history in the decades after 1848. It was the triumph of a society which believed that economic growth rests on competitive private enterprise, on success in buying everything in the cheapest market (including labour) and selling it in the dearest. An economy so based, and therefore nestling naturally on the sound foundations of a bourgoisie composed of those whom energy, merit and intelligence had raised to their position and kept there, would - it was believed - not only create a world of suitably distributed material plenty but of ever-growing enlightenment, reason and human opportunity, an advance of the sciences and the arts, in brief a world of continuous and accelerating material and moral progress.

The splendid finale to Eric Hobsbawm's study of the nineteenth century, THE AGE OF EMPIRE covers the area of Western Imperialism and examines the forces that swept the world to the outbreak of World War One- and shaped modern society.

This is the first account of Russia's second revolution - the country's dramatic, wrenching transition from communist central planning to a market economy. Written by one of the finest writers on contemporary Russia, it is told by interweaving high politics with glimpses of the revolution's impact on the lives of ordinary people.Beginning with a sharp portrayal of the dismal living conditions in the Soviet Union, she moves on to the romantic early days of the capitalist transformation. This was the height of market euphoria when, despite the chaos of everyday life, a prosperous future seemed within easy reach. Woven through the book are remarkable stories - of Yeltsin's use of popular psychics, of the might of the 'robber barons' who form alliances with criminal mafia gangs, of Machiavellian politicians who 'have dealt with the devil and believe they have made a good bargain'. In the final stage of the book, Freeland chronicles the end of the first wave of Russia's capitalist revolution, detailing the economic crisis currently rumbling through the country.

We live in a world of nation states, immortal and political entities that act as a focus for the loyalty of the citizen but cannot by themselves meet those citizens' needs. As the history of our own continent illustrates, a Europe of nation states has bred a Europe of endemic warfare. Such has been the problem facing international diplomacy for nearly two hundred years. Douglas Hurd traces the search for peace back to the Treaty of Vienna in 1815, focusing his attention on four key events - the Congress of Vienna, the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, the Yalta settlement of 1945 and the collapse of Communism. He demonstrates how the diplomatic realism that kept Europe at peace for a century was destroyed by both American idealism at the end of the First World War and the accompanying rise of Nazism, Fascism and Marxism. Only by appreciating the lessons of the past, can we meet the new challenges presented by the tumultuous events of 1989, when the threat of nuclear war was replaced by the open wound of Bosnia. Combining acute historical analysis with the unique insight of a former Foreign Secretary, THE SEARCH FOR PEACE is a major contribution to our understanding of international politics.