I finished Age of Fracture almost a week ago and decided that I would give some time to let my thoughts on this book coalese, but the further I got from that point in readerly time the more distant my thoughts became, the more faded, as if I had read a novel that rivited my attention only for the time of my engagement and was lost upon turning the last page. I reread the Epilogue to remind myself, to reacquaint with that dissatisfaction.I was very dissatisfied when I first completed my reading of it. I found that the Epilogue was a complete disappointment, a summing up that somehow didn’t really match the obvious research and time that went into this fascinating act of  historical/intellectual reconstruction. It could have been entitled From Reagan to Obama: A Political History, but that, of course, would not carry the World Historical import that Age of Fracture carries with it, for good or ill. Professor Rodgers is an utterly conventional thinker, in some ways, not that you would be able to grasp that fact from the chapters that proceed the Epilogue, which are gems of historical prose and analysis. This book is a pleasure to read and worthy of your time and attention, the only real test, as far as I’m concerned. It is rather disappointingly obvious when the summing up of the Epilogue is finished, that the chapters that precede it are the worthy center of this history. Please read this book for the pleasure of its’ cast of familiar characters who come to vivid life illuminated by a more careful reading of  history. I am a plodder, so it took me a week to read this book, but for that pesky Epilogue this is first rate.

Almost Marx