Uncommon People: Resistance, Rebellion and Jazz

Description

This collection of 26 essays ranges over the history of working men and women between the late 18th century and the late 20th century and brings back into print a selection of this celebrated historian's pioneering studies into labour history, together with more recent reflections. 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.

Eric Hobsbawm was born in Alexandria in 1917 and educated in Vienna, Berlin, London and Cambridge. A Fellow of the British Academy and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, with honorary degrees from universities in several countries. He is the well-known author of AGE OF REVOLUTION 1789-1848, THE AGE OF CAPITAL 1848-1875 etc

'The analysis itself, of course, is quite brilliant....' SCOTSMAN 'He combines a novelist's narrative power with an unrivalled command of detail and source' OBSERVER 'Demonstrating that it is possible to be both erudite and accessible, he turns his attention to the "uncommon people" of the 18th and 19th centuries... [Hobsbawm] provides a brilliant deconstruction of the popular idea that revolution and sexual freedom are intrinsically connected.' SUNDAY TIMES 'Dump-if you have any- your preconceptions about Marxist history and buy this book.' OBSERVER 'Brilliantly conceived and beautifully written.' MORNING STAR 'A varied mix, and all presented in characteristically lucid and informative style.' SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY