When the Facts Change

“When the facts change, I change my mind—what do you do, sir?”

A great thinker’s final testament: a characteristically wise and forthright collection of essays spanning a career of extraordinary intellectual engagement

“In an era of growing anti-intellectualism, [Judt’s] essays remind us of what we gain when we stick fast to high ethical and intellectual standards, and what is lost when we let them slip.” —Mark Mazower, Financial Times

“Scintillating journalism.” —Samuel Moyn, The New York Times Book Review
 
In an age in which there has been an erosion of fact-based journalism and the lack of independent public intellectuals has often been sorely lamented, Tony Judt played a rare and valuable role, bringing together history and current events, Europe and America, the world as it was and as it is with what it should be. In When the Facts Change, Tony Judt’s widow and fellow historian Jennifer Homans has assembled an essential collection of Judt’s most important and influential pieces written in the last fifteen years of his life, when he found his voice in the public sphere. These seminal essays reflect the full range of Judt’s concerns, including Europe as an idea and in reality; Israel, the Holocaust, and the Jews; American hyperpower and the world after 9/11; and issues of social inclusion and social justice in a time of increasing inequality.

Judt believed his real job was not to say what wasn’t but to say what was–to tell a convincing, clear story from available evidence, and to do it with a view of what was right and what was just. This was not only a duty, but a moral responsiblity for Judt and When the Facts Change is a testament to his legacy.

Judt’s book, Ill Fares the Land, republished in 2021 featuring a new preface by bestselling author of Between the World and Me and The Water Dancer, Ta-Nehisi Coates.