The New Old World
The New Old World looks at the history of the European Union, the core continental countries within it, and the issue of its further expansion into Asia. It opens with a consideration of the origins and outcomes of European integration since the Second World War, and how today's EU has been theorized across a range of contemporary disciplines. It then moves to more detailed accounts of political and cultural developments in the three principal states of the original Common Market–France, Germany and Italy. A third section explores the interrelated histories of Cyprus and Turkey that pose a leading geopolitical challenge to the Community. The book ends by tracing ideas of European unity from the Enlightenment to the present, and their bearing on the future of the Union. The New Old World offers a critical portrait of a continent now increasingly hailed as a moral and political example to the world at large.
Hardback, 561 pages
ISBN: 9781844673124
December 2009
$39.95 / £24.99
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Reviews
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A hugely ambitious and panoramic political book.
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As insightful, combative and invigorating as its illustrious predecessors.
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Anderson is among the most insightful and policy-relevant analysts of modern Europe.
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Fascinating.
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European pieties go under the knife.
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A magisterial view of the evolution of the European Union.
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Necessary reading for anyone seeking a critical understanding of the EU.
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In the current climate of Euro-conformism reflected in (mostly technocratic and government-funded) conferences and symposia about the future of Europe and the European Union, Perry Anderson has attempted to open up a democratic, lively public debate about the political and economic directions European countries are taking.
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A scintillating display of fireworks.
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Vast and sometimes brilliant.
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Engaging, but eccentric ... Anderson is perceptive, and scathing... with a wealth of argument and illustration.
Blog
"From Progress to Catastrophe"—Perry Anderson on the historical novel
In an essay for the London Review of Books, Perry Anderson discusses the changing forms of the historical novel, charting its development throughout the 19th and 20th century. Using the "best-known of all works of Marxist literary theory", Lukács's The Historical Novel, as a starting point, Anderson reflects on the "strange career" of the form in an essay traversing War and Peace, Alexandre Dumas, and Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa.
Examining the classical forms of the genre, Anderson writes:
For Lukács, the historical novel was essentially epic in form. It was an extensive representation, in Hegelian terms, of the ‘totality of objects', as opposed to the more concentrated ‘totality of movement' proper to drama. But if this is a plausible description of the origins of the form, it cannot account for its diffusion. There, it was not an aspiration to epic totality that would ensure the enormous popularity of fictions about the past, but rather the pre-constituted repertoire of scenes or stories of that history, still overwhelmingly written from the standpoint of battles, conspiracies, intrigues, treacheries, seductions, infamies, heroic deeds and deathless sacrifices - everything that was not prosaic daily life in the 19th century. Here was the road, so to speak, from Jeanie Deans to Milady. The historical novel that conquered European reading publics in the second half of the 19th century would not offend patriotic sentiment, but no longer had a nation-building vocation. The Three Musketeers and its innumerable imitations were entertainment literature.
"What a horrible mess we've made": Geoffrey Wheatcroft on his generation and his hopes for the next
As 2011 opens, Geoffrey Wheatcroft offers a sombre assessment on the current political and economic malaise in the Guardian, contrasting the reality of the post-Cold War order with the euphoric claims made twenty years ago.
“Civil society not an ideal counter-weight to hegemonic powers”—Perry Anderson
Perry Anderson, author most recently of The New Old World, was in India this week to participate in a three-day meeting on "The Global Crisis and Hegemonic Dilemmas." Organized by the Indian Council of Social Science Research and the Madras Institute of Development Studies, the conference brought together world-renowned political and economic experts including not only Anderson but also Leo Panitch (whose book The Making of Global Capitalism, co-authored with Sam Gindin, will be published by Verso in Fall 2011), Vivek Chibber, Chaohua Wang (editor of One China, Many Paths for Verso), and Michael Löwy (author of Fire Alarm and The War of Gods for Verso) among others.
Discussions
Begin a discussionOther books by Perry Anderson
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Spectrum
Assesses the competing claims of theorists from the far right, the liberal centre and the Marxist left.
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The Origins of Postmodernity
A history of the postmodern, and the role of Fredric Jameson in shaping it.
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The Question of Europe
Edited by Perry Anderson, and Peter Gowan
Commentary on European integration from across the political spectrum.
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Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism
"A complex, beautifully interwoven account of Europe from the ancient Greeks"—Guardian
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A Zone of Engagement
An assessment of the seminal thinkers at the border of history and politics.
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English Questions
Examines British society in the sixties, and the changes wrought by the next two decades.
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In the Tracks of Historical Materialism
How Marxist thought evolved in the seventies and early eighties.
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Arguments Within English Marxism
“A very elegant restatement of the undogmatic essence of Marx.”—New Statesman
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Lineages of the Absolutist State
“A dazzlingly provocative narrative.”—Sunday Times