Age of Anger (Mishra)

Age of Anger: A History of the Present
Pankaj Mishra, 2017
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780374274788


Summary
One of our most important public intellectuals reveals the hidden history of our current global crisis.

How can we explain the origins of the great wave of paranoid hatreds that seem inescapable in our close-knit world—from American shooters and ISIS to Donald Trump, from a rise in vengeful nationalism across the world to racism and misogyny on social media?

In Age of Anger, Pankaj Mishra answers our bewilderment by casting his gaze back to the eighteenth century before leading us to the present.

He shows that as the world became modern, those who were unable to enjoy its promises—of freedom, stability, and prosperity—were increasingly susceptible to demagogues.

The many who came late to this new world—or were left, or pushed, behind—reacted in horrifyingly similar ways: with intense hatred of invented enemies, attempts to re-create an imaginary golden age, and self-empowerment through spectacular violence.

It was from among the ranks of the disaffected that the militants of the nineteenth century arose—angry young men who became cultural nationalists in Germany, messianic revolutionaries in Russia, bellicose chauvinists in Italy, and anarchist terrorists internationally.

Today, just as then, the wide embrace of mass politics and technology and the pursuit of wealth and individualism have cast many more billions adrift in a demoralized world, uprooted from tradition but still far from modernity—with the same terrible results.

Making startling connections and comparisons, Age of Anger is a book of immense urgency and profound argument. It is a history of our present predicament unlike any other. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1969
• Where—Jhansi, Uttar Pradesh, India
• Education—B.S., Allahabad University; M.A., Jawaharlal Nehru University
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in London, England, UK


Pankaj Mishra is an Indian novelist and nonfiction writer. He is the author of some 10 books, most well-know of which are Age of Anger: A History of the Present (2017) and From the Ruins of Empire: The Revolt Against the West and the Remaking of Asia (2012).

Background
Mishra graduated with a bachelor's degree in commerce from Allahabad University before earning his Master of Arts degree in English literature at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.

In 1992, he moved to Mashobra, a Himalayan village, where he began to contribute literary essays and reviews to The Indian Review of Books, India Magazine, and the newspaper The Pioneer.

Books
His first book, Butter Chicken in Ludhiana: Travels in Small Town India (1995), is a travelogue describing the social and cultural changes in India in the context of globalization. His novel The Romantics (2000), an ironic tale of people longing for fulfilment in cultures other than their own, was published in 11 European languages and won the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum award for first fiction.

His book, An End to Suffering: The Buddha in the World (2004), mixes memoir, history, and philosophy while attempting to explore the Buddha's relevance to contemporary times. Temptations of the West: How to be Modern in India, Pakistan and Beyond (2006), describes the author's travels through Kashmir, Bollywood, Afghanistan, Tibet, Nepal, and other parts of South and Central Asia.

From the Ruins of Empire (2012) examines the question of "how to find a place of dignity for oneself in this world created by the West, in which the West and its allies in the non-West had reserved the best positions for themselves." Age of Anger (2016) traces the history of the current era's political and social divisiveness.

Other writing
In addition to his books, Mishra has written literary and political essays for the New York Times, New York Review of Books, Guardian, London Review of Books, and New Yorker, among other American, British, and Indian publications. He is a columnist for Bloomberg View and the New York Times Book Review.

His work has also appeared in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Boston Globe, Common Knowledge,  Financial Times, Granta, Independent, New Republic, New Statesman, Wall Street Journal, n+1, Nation, Outlook, Poetry, Time, Times Literary Supplement, Travel + Leisure, and Washington Post.

From 2007-2008, Mishra was the Visiting Fellow in the Department of English at University College, London. Today, he divides his time between London and India.

Recognition and awards
Mishara was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2008. In 2012, Foreign Policy magazine named him one of the top 100 global thinkers. In 2015, Prospect nominated him to its list of 50 World Thinkers.

2000 - Art Seidenbaum Award for Best First Fiction: Romantics
2013 - Crossword Book Award: From the Ruins of Empire.
2014 - Leipzig Book Prize for European Understanding: From the Ruins of Empire
2014 - Windham–Campbell Literature Prize-Nonfiction: From the Ruins of Empire
2014 - Premi Internacional D'assaig Josep Palau i Fabre)
(Author bio adaptd from Wikipedia. Retrieved 2/27/2017)

Book Reviews
[I]mportant, erudite.… [Mishra] has a highly developed understanding of the psychic and emotional forces propelling illiberalism's spread across the globe, a movement united by a sense of disappointment, bewilderment and envy—the spiritual condition that Nietzsche diagnosed as ressentiment.… Liberalism has no choice but to sincerely wrestle with its discontents, to become reacquainted with its moral blind spots and political weaknesses. Technocracy—which defines so much of the modern liberal spirit—doesn't have a natural grasp of psychology and emotion. But if it hopes to stave off the dark forces, it needs to grow adept at understanding the less tangible roots of anger, the human experience uncaptured by data, the resentments that understandably fester. A decent liberalism would read sharp critics like Mishra and learn.
Franklin Foer - New York Times Book Review


Columnist and historian Pankaj Mishra has named a moment and an era: His brilliant new book Age of Anger 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 - 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 - New Republic


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. We revere its thinkers today for their devotion to reason, science, and the rights of man, but they were disdainful of their fellow citoyens, who clung to their muskets and their religion.… 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, 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


(Starred review.) [A]n impressively probing and timely work.… This exploration of global unrest is dense, but it’s so well-written and informative that it manages to be highly engaging.
Publishers Weekly


How did the world get so fractious?… This complicated analysis of a complicated issue will appeal to readers with a background in political, economic, and philosophical history. —Laurie Unger Skinner, Coll. of Lake Cty., Waukegan, IL
Library Journal


A disturbing but imperatively urgent analysis. — Bryce Christensen
Booklist


(Starred review.) How the failures of capitalism have led to "fear, confusion, loneliness and loss"—and global anger.… A probing, well-informed investigation of global unrest calling for "truly transformative thinking" about humanity's future.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, please use our LitLovers talking points to start a discussion for Age of Anger...then take off on your own:

m. Discuss the overall premise of Pankaj Mishra's book, Age of Anger. To what does he attribute the current divisiveness in our political and social arenas—what does he see as the psychic and emotional forces propelling nationalism?

m. Talk about the history Mishra traces—to where and in what historical figure he finds the roots of our current age of anger. Where else in history does he point to as similarly divisive?

m. What refers to ISIS "a broader and more apocalyptic mood that we have witnessed before." What else does Mishra have to say about ISIS?

m. The book was written before Brexit and before the election of Donald Trump. In what way, if at all, might that timing lend credibility to this work?

m. Mishra argues that the West is self-righteous in that it obscures its "own bloody extraordinarily brutal initiation into political and economic modernity" while, at the same time, it urges the rest of the world to undertake the same progression. What does he mean?

m. Consider Jean Jacques Rousseau and the ideas he championed? What does Mishra think of him? What do you think of him? How does Rousseau—and Mishra—view Voltaire? According to our author, what was Voltaire's influence on the development of Western thought?

m. The author finds few, if any, redeeming qualities in liberal democracy? Overall, do you agree with his anger about the economics and politics of the "Western model"?  Does he offer a replacement?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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