The Age of Revolution: Europe: 1789–1848 is a book by Eric Hobsbawm, first published in 1962. It is the first in a trilogy of books about "the long 19th century" (coined by Hobsbawm), followed by The Age of Capital: 1848–1875, and The Age of Empire: 1875–1914. A fourth book, The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1914–1991, acts as a sequel to the trilogy. Hobsbawm analyzed the early 19th century, and indeed the whole process of modernisation thereafter, using what he calls the twin revolution thesis. This thesis recognized the dual importance of the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution as midwives of modern European history, and – through the connections of colonialism and imperialism – world history. Hobsbawm begins The Age of Revolution: Europe: 1789–1848 by noting the invention of so many words, or the words that took on their modern meanings, in the 59-year period covered by the book; some examples of such words he gives are, "industrialist", "middle class", "working class", "socialism", and "statistics". He uses this as an example of how profoundly revolutionary the period 1789 to 1848 was, and how it transformed human society and created our modern world as we know it. The two engines of this profound revolution, Hobsbawm argues, was the "dual revolution" of the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution, with the former's impact being primarily in the political realm and latter's impact primarily in the socio-economic realm. The ideas that sprung from this "dual revolution" would develop and interact with each other, and in the process, construct many of the ideologies, conceptions, and norms of modern society that we take as a given (such as the idea of humans being endowed with natural rights, popular sovereignty, the employer-employee relationship and dynamic, the division of society into economic/income classes as opposed to estates or orders as in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Europe, promotion due to competence and merit rather than aristocratic privilege, etc.). Hobsbawm's period of study begins with the outbreak of two revolutions: The Industrial Revolution and the French Revolution. His period ends, once again, in revolution: The Revolutions of 1848 (though they are not actually covered until his second volume, The Age of Capital: 1848–1875). In between these start and end points, Hobsbawm traces the ways in which the "dual revolution" radically altered societies — mainly English and European continental societies, though some coverage is given to non-European societies, and with some keen insights into them even if they are brief. Source: Wikipedia (en)