Stefan Collini
Age of Anger: A History of the Present
by Pankaj Mishra (Allen Lane, £20)
The constant temptation in immediate commentary on world events is to overreact and overexplain. At the moment, we are being told that our world has been turned upside down, that democracy doesn’t work, that human motivation has changed, that evidence has ceased to matter, and any number of other over-heated simplifications. Just as media scare stories can generate a spasm of panic-buying, so dramatic headlines can provoke a frenzy of panic-writing. Faced with this froth, we turn gratefully to a book that promises to view the turmoil of the present in the longer and calmer perspectives of history.