The Age of Hitler and How We Will Survive It

(Hardback)

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We live in an age where Hitler and the Nazis dominate our cultural imagination, shaping values once defined by religion. In this book historian Alec Ryrie explores why society remains captivated by this struggle, from history and fiction to modern myths such as Star Wars and Harry Potter. He examines the costs of our Nazi obsession and questions what will come as our anti-Nazi moral consensus frays and both the Left and Right begin to move on. With a fresh take on modern history and pop culture, The Age of Hitler offers a thought-provoking look at the culture wars and our shifting political crises, challenging assumptions on both sides and asking what a new moral vision might look like.

'We live amid alarming fractures in the public understanding of our identities, our collective needs and our perils. Alec Ryrie's little book of contemporary history manages to be both exhilarating and comforting, based on his rare skill in bringing an historian's cool gaze on our anxious world to assess its ills, and with due modesty to offer some remedial ways forward.' Diarmaid MacCulloch, Emeritus Professor of the History of the Church, University of Oxford

Reviews

A brilliant exposition of Hitlers role as the embodiment of evil in the collective imagination of the West and of what may happen as it starts to fade. * Tom Holland, author of Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind *
We live amid alarming fractures in the public understanding of our identities, our collective needs and our perils. Alec Ryries little book of contemporary history manages to be both exhilarating and comforting, based on his rare skill in bringing an historians cool gaze on our anxious world to assess its ills, and with due modesty to offer some remedial ways forward. * Diarmaid MacCulloch, Emeritus Professor of the History of the Church, University of Oxford *
Rapidly, provocatively, this book shakes the history of the last few decades into a new and persuasive shape, and asks the question we all need to answer: how shall we orient ourselves, how shall we understand good and evil, when the old taboos are breaking down, and the horrors of the past are losing their strength as guard-rails * Francis Spufford, author of Red Plenty and the Booker Prize-longlisted Light Perpetual *
With his lissome prose, Alec Ryrie is a brilliant guide in the best of the essayist tradition, who empowers us to face the formidable moral questions of our age not as victims but through critical self-examination, ethical reflection, and compassionate action. Who are we The appeal to self-awareness is neither otherworldly nor moralizing. Rather, like the great Montaigne, Ryrie meets us in the middle of his and our lives, offering rich and humane historical reflections as wisdom in our consumerist, perpetually online, and post-truth realities. This is an extraordinary book with which you don't need to be in full agreement to emerge radically transformed into a more enlightened and charitable person in a fraught age. * Bruce Gordon, Titus Street Professor of Ecclesiastical History, Yale Divinity School *

Author Bio

Alec Ryrie is Professor of the History of Christianity at Durham University and a Fellow of the British Academy. His previous books include Unbelievers: An Emotional History of Doubt (2019). He lives in rural County Durham.