3/5 stars
Judt was obviously a master, as anyone who’s read even parts of Postwar can attest. His illness and early death was tragic. The idea for this book – to capture some of his knowledge and ways of thinking before the end – was a good, if macabre, one.
The trouble is, it’s an extended interview where the interviewer doesn’t seem to know when to shut up and let the interviewee speak. Timothy Snyder may well be a good historian in his own right (I don’t believe I’ve read any of his stuff, so can’t tell), but as an interviewer he leaves much to be desired – acting like an eager student trying to please teacher by showing off his own knowledge rather than shutting up and learning from the teacher as he’s supposed to do.
This gets particularly frustrating when Snyder keeps trying to divert Judt onto topics – such as the repeated questions about impact of Judt’s Jewish heritage on his upbringing and thought processes – that Judt continually tries to politely dismiss as largely irrelevant. Judt himself repeatedly points out that he had a more complex intellectual background than merely being a left-wing Jew – to try and shoehorn him into such a stereotype pushes the book dangerously close to being predictable, which is the last thing I’ve come to expect from Judt’s work.
That said, there’s still some fascinating stuff in here – but it needed a tighter edit, largely to remove Snyder’s voice and some of the more rambling digressions, and let Judt’s voice and opinions come through more clearly.