Age of Anger: A History of the Present is a 2017 nonfiction book by Indian author Pankaj Mishra. Mishra accounts for the resurgence of reactionary and right-wing political movements in the late 2010s.
He argues that nationalist, isolationist, and chauvinist movements, ranging from terror groups such as ISIS to political movements such as Brexit, have emerged in response to the globalization and normalization of Western ideals such as individualism, capitalism, and secularism.
Mishra notes that disorder and violence naturally accompanied the coming of industrial capitalism in the Western world, citing events such as the French Revolution, the Revolutions of 1848, and two World Wars. He argues that the rest of the world is now undergoing that same series of shocks and that new tensions resulting from the Enlightenment are not yet resolved even in Europe.
He criticizes the view that early-twentieth-century strife was an aberration interrupting a long history of steady progress and increasing prosperity, instead arguing that disorder is endemic to modernity. In the first half of the book Mishra dwells on the dispute between philosophers Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who lived during the eighteenth century when Enlightenment ideals and economic, political, and social liberalism began gaining momentum in Europe.
According to Mishra, Rousseau was among those who best anticipated the problems modernity would bring: rootlessness, competition, and materialism.
