Remembering Eric Hobsbawm, Historian for Social Justice 

...Hobsbawm is best known for his magisterial four-volume series The Age of Revolution (1962), The Age of Capital (1975), The Age of Empire (1987) and The Age of Extremes (1994), which together chronicles world history from the beginning of the French Revolution to the end of the Soviet Union. Long before the current vogue for “internationalizing” the study of history, Hobsbawm insisted that capitalism is a global system, which must be studied in a global context. The books drew on events in every region of the world, and on sources and scholarship in multiple languages. Hobsbawm was comfortable discussing subjects as far afield from Great Britain as the Latin American wars of independence, the Meiji Restoration in Japan and the rise to global power of the United States, yet he was able to merge local details into a coherent account of global political, economic and social change. The account also delves into art, culture, science, technology and other realms of human creativity and experience. These books remain the starting point for anyone who seeks a comprehensive history of the modern world...