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Thinking the Twentieth Century

Thinking the Twentieth Century

Two explorers set out on a journey from which only one of them will return. Their unknown land is that often fearsome continent we call the 20th Century. Their route is through their own minds and memories. Both travellers are professional historians still tormented by their own unanswered questions. They needed to talk to one another, and the time was short.

This is a book about the past, but it is also an argument for the kind of future we should strive for. Thinking the Twentieth Century is about the life of the mind - and the mindful life.

Reviews

  • Timothy Snyder's initiative has prompted a sparkling dialogue which, through following the stages of Tony Judt's life and emergence as an exceptional historian, offers important reflections on major currents of political thinking in the 20th century

    Ian Kershaw

  • There is much brilliance here to enjoy ... The best kind of book

    David Aaronovitch, The Times

  • Brilliant to the bitter end...Tony Judt was combative and razor-sharp even as he was dying...A moving, enlightening and provocative read...It is impossible not to marvel at the dying man's extraordinary mental recall and moral integrity ... This book, bristling with learning, is a staggering achievement

    Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times

  • Thinking the Twentieth Century is a substantial achievement

    Tony Barber, Financial Times

  • Brilliantly eloquent

    Neil Ascherson, Guardian

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About the Author

Timothy Snyder

Timothy Snyder is Levin Professor of History at Yale University and the author of fifteen critically acclaimed books including The Road to Unfreedom and most recently On Tyranny which was an international bestseller. His previous books include Black Earth, which was longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize and won the annual prize of the Dutch Auschwitz Committee; and Bloodlands, which won the Hannah Arendt Prize, the Leipzig Book Prize for European Understanding, the Ralph Waldo Emerson Award in the Humanities and the literature award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in New Haven, Connecticut.

Timothy Snyder

Tony Judt

Professor Tony Judt was a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, the New Republic, the New York Times and many other journals in Europe and the US. His books include Ill Fares the Land, Reappraisals: Reflections on the Forgotten Twentieth Century, and Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945, which was one of the New York Times Book Review's Ten Best Books of 2005, the winner of the Council on Foreign Relations Arthur Ross Book Award, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He died in August, 2010 at the age of 62.

Tony Judt

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