Eric Hobsbawm, the Marxist historian whose work on capitalism, nationalism, and revolution shaped a generation of scholarship, concludes his four-volume history of the modern world with this examination of the 'short twentieth century' from 1914 to 1991. Hobsbawm divides this period into three ages: the Age of Catastrophe (1914-1950), encompassing two world wars, the Great Depression, and the rise of fascism; the Golden Age (1950-1973), when capitalism and communism alike delivered unprecedented growth and social improvement; and the Landslide (1973-1991), when the postwar order collapsed into crisis. Writing in 1994, just after the Soviet Union's dissolution, Hobsbawm acknowledges communism's failure while arguing that its challenge had forced capitalism to reform itself. The book ranges across economics, politics, culture, science, and the arts, showing how developments in each sphere connected to the others. Hobsbawm draws on his own experience as a participant in the century's radical movements as well as his prodigious scholarly knowledge. The result is a work of synthesis that captures the century's drama while maintaining analytical distance. Readers will find here not just a history of events but an interpretation that makes sense of the twentieth century's trajectory and offers perspective on the uncertain world that followed.