| This sweeping survey of the post-war period contains fascinating insights but lacks an organising principle It takes chutzpah to write a synoptic history of the world in the second half of the 20th century, a period within living memory of the reading public. But it is a history Jonathan Sperber handles with brio, summoning evidence from personal anecdotes and high theory, vignettes and statistics. In its range of themes and reconstructions, The Age of Interconnection invites favourable comparison with that other survey of the 20th century, Eric Hobsbawm’s The Age of Extremes. Yet it is quite unlike it. Where the Marxist historian offered a sweeping narrative arc illustrating the relentless advance of capitalism, Sperber dispenses with a unifying theme altogether. It’s a sign of the times: we’ve lost faith in grand narratives, more’s the pity. His framing sheds little light on his period. As every historian knows, all ages are ages of interconnection. But what he loses in explanatory depth, he gains in intellectual breadth. Reading the book is a bit like watching a pentathlon. In lieu of fencing, riding, swimming, shooting and running, we have sections on the environment, economy, politics, society and cultural and intellectual life. It appears Sperber has taken Proust’s dictum to heart: “to write on everything to the point of exhaustion”. The exhaustiveness verges on redundancy at times, as in his tortuous excursions on staphylococcus and streptococcus infections, and rocket velocity. Class in the 20th century “took the form of a hierarchy”, he explains, as if to a Martian. Continue reading... |
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