★ 01/23/2017
In an impressively probing and timely work, Mishra, a novelist and cultural critic (A Great Clamour), illuminates intellectual patterns from the past 200 years that help explain our volatile present. In an age where tribal nationalism is on the rise and aggressive right-wing leaders are in power in Turkey, India, and the U.S., Mishra examines the modern world from the perspective of those left behind or rendered superfluous. He pays particular attention to the Enlightenment in 18th-century France and the clash between Voltaire’s meritocracy and Rousseau’s warning against “a commercial society based on mimetic desire, as a game rigged by and in favor of elites.” Mishra shows how Rousseau’s ideas presaged German Romanticism, subsequent revolutions throughout the world (both failed and successful), and today’s Hindu and Chinese nationalists. Mishra also discusses the relative latecomers to modernity in Europe (Germany, Russia, Italy) who sensed capitalism’s downside; the Asian leaders who “saw themselves as modernizers in a hurry”; and the reaction against modernity in the writings of Dostoyevsky, Nietzsche, Iranian novelist Jalal Al-e-Ahmad, and many others. This exploration of global unrest is dense, but it’s so well-written and informative that it manages to be highly engaging. (Feb.)
Mishra may well be the ideal writer to diagnose our current moment . . . In Age of Anger, Mishra has produced an urgent analysis of a moment in which the forgotten and dispossessed are rising up to challenge everything we thought we knew about the state of the world.” —Sebastian Strangio, Los Angeles Review of Books
“Important, erudite . . . Mishra dwells in the realm of ideas and emotions, which get short shrift in most accounts of global politics. So it's bracing and illuminating for him to focus on feelings . . . A decent liberalism would read sharp critics like Mishra and learn.” —Franklin Foer, The New York Times Book Review
"Pankaj Mishra, attempting to make sense of this confusing world of ours, makes a compelling, erudite case that the disrupting forces of globalization and rising income inequality inevitably provoke backlashes." —Nishant Dahiya, NPR
"Columnist and historian Pankaj Mishra has named a moment and an era: His brilliant new book Age of Anger: A History of the Present looks at the rising tide of radical nationalism, racism, intolerance, misogyny, xenophobia, and fascism that's sweeping away calmer and more measured opposition all over the world, and he attempts to understand the phenomena before it engulfs everybody on the planet. . . Fiercely literate and eloquent.” —Steve Donoghue, The Christian Science Monitor
“In its literacy and literariness, [Age of Anger] has the feel of Edmund Wilson’s extraordinary dramas of modern ideas—books like To the Finland Station—but with a different endpoint and a more global canvas. Mishra reads like a brilliant autodidact, putting to shame the many students who dutifully did the reading for their classes but missed the incandescent fire and penetrating insight in canonical texts.” —Samuel Moyn, The New Republic
"A short book into which a lot of intellectual history has been packed . . . Nearly every page illuminates the current political climate." —Laura Miller, Slate
“In probing for the wellspring of today’s anger [Pankaj Mishra] hits on something real. He traces our current mood back to the French Enlightenment of the 18th century. . . Along with quotations from Voltaire, Rousseau, and other familiar figures of Western Civ, Age of Anger includes observations from Iranian, Chinese, Indian, Japanese, and other nations’ scholars; their perspectives complement Mishra’s deep understanding of global tensions.” —Peter Coy, Bloomberg Businessweek
“Erudite …[In] Age of Anger: A History of the Present, which was conceived before Brexit and Trump, the Indian nonfiction writer and novelist Pankaj Mishra argues that our current rage has deep historical roots.” —Bryan Walsh, Time
“Richly learned and usefully subversive.” —John Gray, Literary Review
“A bowel-churning kick in the guts . . . [Pankaj Mishra's] vision is unusually broad, accommodating and resistant to categorisation. It is the kind of vision the world needs right now . . . Age of Anger is vitally germane to the global expressions of discontent that we are now witnessing” —Christopher de Bellaigue, Financial Times
“[An] ambitious world history of anti-progressive backlash.” —New York
“A disturbing but imperatively urgent analysis.” — Bryce Christensen, Booklist (starred review)
“A probing, well-informed investigation of global unrest calling for ‘truly transformative thinking’ about humanity's future.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“With a deep knowledge of both Western and non-Western history, and like no other before him, Pankaj Mishra comes to grips with the malaise at the heart of these dangerous times. This is the most astonishing, convincing, and disturbing book I’ve read in years.” —Joe Sacco
“In this urgent, profound and extraordinarily timely study, Pankaj Mishra follows the likes of Isaiah Berlin, John Gray and Mark Lilla by delving into the past in order to throw light on our contemporary predicament, when the neglected and dispossessed of the world have suddenly risen up in Nietzschean ressentiment to transform the world we thought we knew.” —John Banville
"In Age of Anger: A History of the Present, Pankaj Mishra offers a panoramic survey of the populist wind roiling the world and a genealogy of the ressentiment propelling it. Lucid, incisive and provocative, the book may be the most ambitious effort yet to diagnose our social condition. With erudition and insight, it explains why movements from below are entrusting their future to paternalistic demagogues in the expectation of rewards from above." —Muhammad Idrees Ahmad, The National
02/01/2017
How did the world get so fractious? Literary and political essayist Mishra (columnist, Bloomberg View & the New York Times Book Review; From the Ruins of Empire) traces worldwide modern political upheaval to the opposing philosophies of Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The unrealized promise of social, political, and economic equality held out by the Enlightenment vs. the reality of deep-rooted and increasing inequality has led to centuries of ressentiment—ingrained resentment and hostility toward others coupled with a sense of powerlessness, envy, and humiliation. Mishra shows that ressentiment is at the root of seemingly diverse movements: chauvinism, jingoism, nationalism, authoritarianism, religious fundamentalism, and anarchy. It has persisted through the industrial revolution to the urbanization and globalization of today. Ressentiment exists globally, from Africa and Asia to Europe, Russia, and the United States. Examples from events and political movements from the late 18th century through the present day support his ideas; his conclusions about the our current state and future are bleak. VERDICT This complicated analysis of a complicated issue will appeal to readers with a background in political, economic, and philosophical history. [See Prepub Alert, 8/15/16.]—Laurie Unger Skinner, Coll. of Lake Cty., Waukegan, IL
If you need reminding that recent global events, the rise of nationalism and demagogues, and the rejection of the liberal world order pose a threat to freedom, then this audiobook is for you. Narrator Derek Perkins’s deep voice and English accent capture the audiobook’s pessimistic tone. The author compares the events of our time with mostly catastrophic twentieth-century events and concludes that we are susceptible to the same forces that led to the breakdown of the world order at that time. Perkins’s voice is reminiscent of WWII documentary narrators of the BBC, full of ominous portents but somehow vaguely reassuring that truth win out in the end. His pacing and diction are exemplary, but, again, this is not an audiobook for those looking for hope. R.I.G. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine
★ 2016-12-25
How the failures of capitalism have led to "fear, confusion, loneliness and loss"—and global anger.In this ambitious, deeply researched analysis, social critic and novelist Mishra (From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals Who Remade Asia, 2012, etc.) makes a persuasive argument that industrialism and capitalism have spawned virulent expressions of anger. He sees current upheaval—which fuels the Islamic State group and led to Brexit and Donald Trump's political success—stemming from the same source "as myriad Romantic revolts and rebellions of early nineteenth-century Europe"—i.e., "the mismatch between personal expectations, heightened by a traumatic break with the past, and the cruelly unresponsive reality of slow change." Individual freedom can feel terrifying, leading to a desire for an authoritative leader and, as Tocqueville put it, an "insatiable need for action, violent emotions, vicissitudes, and dangers." Mishra argues against taking an "us-them" view of the world as a contest between Western rationalism and "Islamofascism" but instead blames the current malaise on the West's insistence on the superiority of Enlightenment philosophy and failure to deliver on its promise of progress. As the author writes, a "promised universal civilization—one harmonized by a combination of universal suffrage, broad educational opportunities, steady economic growth, and private initiative and personal advancement—has not materialized." Most people, he believes, live fearfully in a world that they see they cannot control; they feel under siege by grisly horrors perpetrated by enemies, by the present and future effects of climate change, and by "arrogant and deceptive elites" who make them feel humiliated. Mishra bases his sage analysis on the "eclectic ideas" of European social theorists, including Dostoyevsky, Arendt, Heine, Marx, and scores of others. He especially highlights the contrast between Voltaire, "an unequivocal top-down modernizer," and Rousseau, who "tried to outline a social order where morals, virtue and human character rather than commerce and money were central to politics." A probing, well-informed investigation of global unrest calling for "truly transformative thinking" about humanity's future.
