Thinking the Twentieth Century
by Tony Judt with Timothy Snyder is a conversation about the twentieth century between two historian-friends. The book is mostly Judt speaking, but Snyder speaks also. So we have the thoughts of two men who spent their lives inside the cloistered environment of the Academy, yet without quite succumbing. Happily, there's some derring-do that pops up now and then as they talk.
Synder is the Yale historian who wrote Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin
. A couple months ago I read this book and it's indispensable to understand what has misleadingly come to be referred to as "The" Holocaust, meaning Germans killing Jews in Germany. Translated into 24 languages now, Bloodlands will correct that misimpression and should be on your reading list.
Judt taught at Cambridge, Oxford, Berkley, and NYU (from which he retired). Founder of the Remarque Institute and author of fourteen books, Judt contributed regularly to The Times Literary Supplement, The New York Review of Books, The New Republic, and other American and European journals. During the writing of Thinking the Twentieth Century, Judt was in his final months of the degenerative neurological disease ALS (commonly called Lou Gehrig Disease). He died in August 2010.
As time allows, I'll record parts of the book I found noteworthy. This is the first installment...
Shows are meant to be consumed in front of the curtain—not behind it. Behind are the things you don't want the audience to see or know because it would ruin the performance.