Fans pick 100 books like The Age of Extremes

My first point of concern is the fact that ideas and concepts are historical products altered in time.

In his book, Professor Andrén provides a historical context for the ideas of Europe and their sources that have emerged over the last two centuries. He neatly shows the historicity of the thoughts as constructs linked to the regional and global conditions of their time.

He highlights the visions of Europe in the 19th century marked by revolutions and unifications; in the first half of the 20th century, marked by wars and crises. He then examines the visions in the second half of the century characterized by the search for peace and prosperity, European integration and a pan-European identity.

Let us navigate from Andrén's point of view that ideas about Europe did not die out, but evolved into more current constructs in modern European history.

How have the regions of the continent been imagined and constructed in relation to a European framework? Bringing together contemporary experts such as Stefan Berger, Bo Strath, Stefan Troebst, and Alex-Drace Francis, the editors aim to explore the political, cultural, and intellectual contexts of European regions at the meso level.

They examine conceptualisations in relation to counter-concepts or clusters of concepts (e.g. Western Europe vs. Southern or Southeastern Europe) and relate them to debates on coexistence and the construction of the 'self' versus the 'other'. 

As such, the chapters provide an insightful discussion of the historicity and reflexivity of the spatial terminology of Europe.

How was the common European memory constructed in the second half of the 20th century and how does it serve the common understanding of Europeanness?

Transforming memory constructions into a common European culture of remembrance requires political will and capacity, which today is mostly represented by the EU and its nation states. By analysing the speeches of political elites at commemorative events, Sierp shows how 'European memory' was materialised between pan-European and national initiatives after the Second World War, and how regional conceptions of the Holocaust and its perpetrators were transformed into a common understanding.

The book also recalls the historicity of European memory and its function for the project of European identity.

Critical approaches are essential for the democratic formation of a common European and national memory.

The integration of the components (events and their commemoration) into a common European memory runs the risk of homogenising the descriptions and transforming them into a discourse in support of national or continental supremacy. With this in mind, Stefan Berger, Wulf Kansteiner and many of the contributors under their editorship explore how an agonistic approach to memory, a logic proposed in opposition to nationalist, teleological, and progressivist memory politics, can serve European memory culture.

The collection is based on a completed project, analysing the confrontation between agonistic memory and war memory in well-known European museums. All in all, memory politics should stimulate local democratic participation, promote ethical development, and influence social dynamics for collective solidarity.

Few stood against many as the fate of Taiwan hung in the balance. This is a gripping account of the 1660s clash between Ming loyalist Koxinga and besieged Dutch colonists at Fort Zeelandia. Written by a historian with a flair for narrative, Taiwan’s most exciting historical episode is recounted in fascinating detail, with twists and turns, and wide zooms out for comparisons of European and Chinese technological prowess. It’s an accessible book yet so richly informative and dramatic that it rewards multiple readings. 

The Age of Empire is a momentous history of Europe and the world in the era that contained the immediate origins and dynamics that led into World War One, but was also crucial in shaping world history to this day. 

At the beginning of the book, Hobsbawm offers a grand-scale perspective on the ‘contradictions of liberal bourgeois society in the age of empire’, which, for me, is among the most helpful and insightful big – and dialectical – ideas about modern history. 

In the form of ‘the contradictions of neoliberal bourgeois society’, I went so far as to update and apply his original idea to world history since WWI and right up to our own times.

I am very interested in the unique challenges that African American children face in the United States. The impacts and continuing effects of slavery and systemic racism begin affecting them before they can articulate the discrimination they experience. This book makes me question the root causes of prejudice and how it is instilled in and inflicted on children.

I include this remarkable book because Bartov does for German criminality what Glantz does for operations: corrects decades of misconceptions. He was at the forefront of the post-Cold War movement to undo the “clean Wehrmacht” vs. “dirty Nazis/SS” bias that dominated the first 40 years of post-WWII history.

He makes clear that the German military was political and politicized and that Nazi ideology went deep into the ranks and was a key factor in keeping Germans, as a nation and as a platoon or regiment, fighting against hopeless odds.

Hersch applies the sober, decidedly unsentimental, and almost brutally incisive analytical framework of labor conflict and professionalization to a whole range of issues negotiated within NASA—from the criteria for astronaut selection to the degree of spacecraft automation to mission programming. Each of these issues emerges loaded with interests of various professional groups—test pilots, military pilots, scientists, engineers, and managers. The astronaut profession is born through a series of clashes of professional cultures, each competing for influence within the US space program.

In my view, comparing this story with the parallel developments on the Soviet side reveals drastic differences. While the pilots-cosmonauts found themselves almost completely at the mercy of powerful space engineers, the astronauts skillfully used their symbolic capital to gain influence on decision-making at NASA.

The deepest level of witchcraft and magical experience is psychological.

Most executed witches are unlikely to have carried out the practices of which they were accused – certainly not attendance at the sabbat, and not usually deliberate magical harm. But magical practitioners offered a wide range of mostly positive services: healing, finding lost and stolen goods, and love magic.

Edward Bever’s book is densely-written, often quoting from medical sources, but worth persevering with: it opens up a realm of magical action and experience. My favourite chapters deal with how beneficial magic was perceived to have worked, but there is darker material too – including intentional curses.