Age of Anger is a tour of European intellectual history by essayist Pankaj Mishra, an attempt at getting to the ontological root of the resurgence of reactionary sentiment that emerged around the world in 2016 with the election of demagogues like Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro, and Narenda Modi.

At first glance, Mishra appears to be a deliberate and lucid thinker. The argument he makes in this book is that the widespread anger we are witnessing at present in the world is not anything new but rather is a variation on a theme which reaches back to the 18th century. It stems, he says, from the fact that modern humans have bought into the ideal, championed by Enlightenment philosophes, of human progress through the meticulous application of reason and the inherent equality of all men (and women) in their capacity to participate in the journey and reap the benefits that were previously arrogated by an entrenched aristocracy. This belief, of course, is entirely at variance with the actual world we now inhabit, and when the reality eventually becomes manifest, the result is Kierkegaard's and Nietzsche's notion of ressentiment--envy and resentment--on a mass scale. Mishra says that fascism, anarchism, communism, nationalism, groups like ISIS, Hindu nationalists, "lone-wolf" mass shooters, Nazis, white supremacists, etc. all share a common thread in that they are all reactions to the sense of being left out in the march of progress, which we have all been taught to believe is the reason for our existence.

The book is filled with what one might say is a surfeit of names, books, and events pulled from European intellectual history which, while very interesting to pursue as separate threads of their own, really bog the reader down. So much time is spent on these minutiae that the reader is left feeling dazzled and a bit overwhelmed by Mishra's fund of knowledge but without having really gained any new insights. The overall aim seems to have been more along the lines of agglomeration than elucidation. When asked by readers what the solution to ressentiment is in extended interviews, Mishra hems and haws about not being a prophet. He seems very careful in his descriptions of the prevailing hyper-Nietzschean ethos to not really take any fixed stance on the matter, though in one telling passage near the end of the book he does mention in passing that modernity's losers simply didn't have the talent to make it into the upper classes, which is not only absurd but reveals a bit of Mishra's own class privilege. While all of the movements and groups he describes may share a common source of discontent, their aims, worldviews, and methods are radically different, a fact which Mishra seems to pay short shrift to in his attempt to reach some overarching, coherent narrative. An anarchist and a fascist may feel left out and be angry with the way society is presently ordered, but that's about as far as the similarities go. It might have been more enlightening if Mishra had gone into the psychological idiosyncrasies at play in such movements, which to me seems of far more interest and relevance. There isn't much of that sort of analysis here, but one can find it in writers like Adorno if interested. Overall, this is a good read for those new to European intellectual history, as there are lots of works and authors that can be followed up on, but as for novel insights, I'm afraid the book doesn't quite deliver.