- Hardcover: 488 pages
- Publisher: W&N (28 Aug 2008)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0297852329
- ISBN-13: 978-0297852322
- Product Dimensions: 23.4 x 16 x 4.4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 513,135 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
| ||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £2.50
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in The Vertigo Years: Change And Culture In The West, 1900-1914 for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £2.50, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Product details |
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
"an ambitious book - a one-volume assessment of the gravity-eroding, giddying sweep of European cultural, social, political and spiritual change that permeated the first 15 years of teh 2oth century. But Philipp Blom has pulled it off triumphantly... a work of narrative history at its best." (JULIET NICOLSON THE GUARDIAN )
"a stimulating and original insight into an all-too-familiar period.. vivid... illuminating...." (PIERS BRENDON THE SUNDAY TIMES )
'An account of the fourteen years preceding the First World War, which saw the rise of a new world order, revealing the extent to which the twentieth century was essentially framed before the First World War.' (HISTORY TODAY )
"This is a hugely rich field and the book is full of good things." (THE LITERARY REVIEW )
"In this masterful presentation, the time in question is so richly laced with scientific bedazzlement, social ferment and cultural churning that a sense of giddying misadventure begins to feel strangely familiar." (KIRKUS REVIEW )
"a stimulating and original insight into an all-too-familiar period.. vivid... illuminating...." (PIERS BRENDON THE SUNDAY TIMES )
'An account of the fourteen years preceding the First World War, which saw the rise of a new world order, revealing the extent to which the twentieth century was essentially framed before the First World War.' (HISTORY TODAY )
"This is a hugely rich field and the book is full of good things." (THE LITERARY REVIEW )
"In this masterful presentation, the time in question is so richly laced with scientific bedazzlement, social ferment and cultural churning that a sense of giddying misadventure begins to feel strangely familiar." (KIRKUS REVIEW )
Review
"an ambitious book - a one-volume assessment of the gravity-eroding, giddying sweep of European cultural, social, political and spiritual change that permeated the first 15 years of teh 2oth century. But Philipp Blom has pulled it off triumphantly... a work of narrative history at its best."
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
An excellent and erudite work which expresses cultural history in palatable (yet enticingly contentious) anecdotal portions. Most importantly Blom identifies neurasthenia (nervous exhaustion)as the lasting product of these years - as automated lifestyles separate themselves from the holistic materialism that preceded. This, alone, makes the book valuable as a diagnosis for even 21st Century ills, as well as putting the final dagger in the heart of the Romantic idyll (that never existed) to be conveniently shattered by the travesties of the Great War.
A book that would appeal to anyone interested in cultural history as well as those of us that simply want ammunition for duller moments at the bar! My only reservation is the seemingly arbitary year-by-year chapter divisions, simply because most events covered are so homogenous, so inter-related that they can't credibly be focussed by an annual lens. Nevertheless this is a compulsive and fluent read - highly recommended,
A book that would appeal to anyone interested in cultural history as well as those of us that simply want ammunition for duller moments at the bar! My only reservation is the seemingly arbitary year-by-year chapter divisions, simply because most events covered are so homogenous, so inter-related that they can't credibly be focussed by an annual lens. Nevertheless this is a compulsive and fluent read - highly recommended,
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I must confess to having been taken in by the adjectives used by the editors and reviewers like 'breathtaking', 'anecdotal' and 'compulsive'. Basically, this is very solid history writing by someone who repeatedly assumes that the reader will nod sagely when reading lines like:"There is an obvious kinship between Einstein's radical relativity of space and time and Ernst Mach's epistemological impressionism" without getting further information on the subject.
It is of course extremely flattering to be repeatedly treated as a highbrow intellectual, but to mere mortals this doesn't always make the book unputdownable. And I do agree with the reviewer remarking that the year-by-year division of the chapters is arbitrary and often illogical. The author moreover repeatedly has trouble sticking to his own chosen format.
This book does get the message across that 1914 was no abrupt break from a sleepy 19th century or easygoing fin-de siecle way of living, but that the previous years were a period of unprecedented development and innovation. Anecdotal or witty is however not how I would describe the narrative style. Rather: a serious book for the serious student of the era.
It is of course extremely flattering to be repeatedly treated as a highbrow intellectual, but to mere mortals this doesn't always make the book unputdownable. And I do agree with the reviewer remarking that the year-by-year division of the chapters is arbitrary and often illogical. The author moreover repeatedly has trouble sticking to his own chosen format.
This book does get the message across that 1914 was no abrupt break from a sleepy 19th century or easygoing fin-de siecle way of living, but that the previous years were a period of unprecedented development and innovation. Anecdotal or witty is however not how I would describe the narrative style. Rather: a serious book for the serious student of the era.
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The year by year format used here is not a chronological description of events leading up to 1914 but a means whereby the author picks an event from that year and shows how it affected events elsewhere and else when (sic) and allows digressions into the late Victorian era to show how we got to that point as well. As other reviewers state, this is not always successful. As an example the entry to do with the Belgian Congo starts off promisingly but ends up being a discourse on empiricism which was a bit slight, Of course whole volumes have been written on this subject alone so some pruning has to be expected but this just serves to make the point that the author felt he had to make his content fit the format.
Given that the author is Austrian, there is a bias towards central European affairs which for me was interesting but in some cases missed the point. For example, in the same Empire chapter mentioned above, Britain, Germany and France get equal billing but there is no mention whatsoever of what Spain was doing in south or central America and Russia barely gets a look in -perhaps because it gets its own chapter later on.
For me the advantage of this book's episodic format means that you can read a chapter or two then put the book down to read something else then pick it up at a later date and carry on.
Given that the author is Austrian, there is a bias towards central European affairs which for me was interesting but in some cases missed the point. For example, in the same Empire chapter mentioned above, Britain, Germany and France get equal billing but there is no mention whatsoever of what Spain was doing in south or central America and Russia barely gets a look in -perhaps because it gets its own chapter later on.
For me the advantage of this book's episodic format means that you can read a chapter or two then put the book down to read something else then pick it up at a later date and carry on.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Was this review helpful?
Let us know
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by category
- Books > Biography > Historical > Countries & Regions > Europe
- Books > History
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
