Against the World

“Ms. Zahra’s narrative shows us how closely—even eerily—our present-day world resembles the state of the globe roughly a century ago…. The most engaging sections of Ms. Zahra’s vigorous and informative book are those in which she offers us biographical portraits of some of the players in the great game of globalization.” – Tunku Varadarajan - The Wall Street Journal
”[Zahra] has written a panoramic work illustrating how societies across the world reacted in the interwar ear against the perceived threats of a globalised economy. “ – Best Books of 2023: History - Financial Times
”[A] superb history of the interwar period… Zahra has produced one of the best and most timely works of global history of the past few years.” – Gavin Jacobson - The New Statesman
“A panoramic history of anti-globalisation… Zahra deftly weaves cutting-edge scholarship and human stories into concerns about democracy, markets and nation-states.” – Financial Times
“Every story in this book is relevant and absorbing; Zahra plaits her narrative strands together with such deliberation and skill that nothing is out of place.” – Jennifer Szalai - The New York Times
“Against the World counterintuitively offers a global history from the perspective of its discontents. Brilliantly conceived and masterfully told.” – Mae Ngai, Bancroft Award–winning author of The Chinese Question
“Against the World is a tour de force: Tara Zahra brings her formidable talents as a writer and scholar to this elegant, consistently surprising, and richly peopled book.” – Sunil Amrith, author of Unruly Waters
“Against the World not only alerts us to the central intellectual folly of our age. Splendidly timely, it also explains our bewildering present of war and rancorous mass politics, and outlines both challenges and possibilities in our shared future.” – Pankaj Mishra, author of Bland Fanatics
“Every day brings another headline about the end of globalization but, as Tara Zahra shows us in her lively and learned new book, we have been here before.… Through vivid portraits of contemporaries from Czech shoe baron Tomás Bat’a to Hungarian-born femin” – Quinn Slobodian, author of Globalists

Tara Zahra is a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellow, and a professor of history at the University of Chicago. Recently elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, she lives in Chicago, Illinois.

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