Joe

Hobsbawm argued that nations emerged only recently with modernism and, writing in 1989, that globalism fated them to imminent obsolescence. History has not looked kindly upon this thesis, and he offered some begrudging caveats in a 1992 edition. Contrasting historians like Smith (1986) have correctly foreseen nationalism's persistence and proliferation because few other non-religious constructs meet human needs for identity, continuity, and collective immortality that an ethno-national myth provides.

Thomas Kidd: “Maybe the most illuminating book I read this year. Like many Christians, I have always been puzzled by the creedal statements that Jesus descended to hell, or to the dead. Emerson’s book offers great insight into what the creeds mean by this statement, and how the doctrine may fit into evangelical theology of Christ’s death and resurrection.”

Ballsy reporting of the infiltration from Europe of the most prominent left-wing street milita into America. While his subjects cowered behind masks, he stood in the open and documented the crap out of his story with 429 endnotes.

Meandering civilian re-acclimation for a late 20s vet without much of a plumbline until he invests hope in an ephemeral internal encounter. I found the narrative flat and wasn't impressed with the resting point at a sort of self-creation. Immersive description of mid-20th Century New Orleans.

Thomas Kidd: “Russian history has long been fascinating to me. This gripping book gave me a new appreciation for just how unlikely it was that the Leninists could have taken over the Russian government, and just how disastrous it was that they did.”