Age of Anger

April 3, 2017
Perkins puts his erudite but approachable speaking style to good use in the audio edition of Mishra’s title on the philosophical heritage behind a recent wave of aggressive nationalism around the globe. Perkins resists the temptation to focus on caricature accents in reading the text, which includes extensive quotations from a range of historical figures hailing from diverse places. However, he does utilize tone and pitch to convey the stances and temperaments of these leaders, which makes it easier for listeners to grasp points about the sweeping divide between the elitism of Voltaire and the natural-man ideals of Rousseau and follow passages drawing out common threads in the diatribes of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and the pronouncements of al-Qaeda and ISIS. Perkins and Mishra complement one another, making this intellectually challenging material easier to comprehend. A Farrar, Straus and Giroux hardcover.

Starred review from January 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.