When he died in 2012 at the age of ninety-five, Eric Hobsbawm was probably the most famous historian in the world, as well known in Brazil and Japan as in London. He was also among the most highly regarded, despite (or perhaps because of) his long-term commitment to Marxism. It may seem remarkable that a biography of an academic historian, who held no public offices, as well-written as it is gripping, can be sustained for 785 pages, but this is the achievement of Sir Richard Evans in this monumental biography, one of the best I have ever read about anyone.…