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Amazon.co.uk Review
"The earth", said Gertrude Stein in 1938, "is not the same as in the 19th century". And how. Covering a staggeringly vast distance, Peter Conrad traces the development of modern consciousness as reflected in its art and thought, via Vienna, Paris, Berlin, and Tokyo, until he reaches the end of the 20th century--a dizzying point on the brink of a new millennium. He compares the progress to that of a human life, passing from youthful zest to maturity, but only by way of anguish and torment. This sounds simplistic; the book is not. Conrad's prose is as fluid as his ideas are sharp, and the scope of his reference is enviable, its application impeccable. This is intellectual writing at its most accessible. He considers Freud and Chaplin, Stravinsky and Einstein, as he pursues his theme of a planet that has shrunk as we have grown, to a size that we can manipulate and, as Hiroshima showed, we can destroy. Our greatest advances have been technological, he argues, yet at the expense of reducing the individualism of humankind, of "dumbing down" to a sedative senility. Wisely avoiding the business of prediction, his declaration of faith in laughter when facing the future, and in the reinterpretation of the past in order to escape it, provides a pleasantly unexpected conclusion. Arranged in 30 chapters, each a rounded essay in its own right, Modern Times, Modern Places is a powerfully evocative appraisal of the 20th century and its achievements, which succeeds where quite frankly many will fail. --David Vincent
Product Description
The world has changed faster during the 20th century than ever before. All our previous assumptions about God, our social, economic and political structures, science and technology, and - by extension - ourselves and our culture have been utterly transformed. The 20th century is the century that dared to question everything and its progress is told in this tour de force. "Modern Times" are explored through the cultural expressions - in art, in literature, in music - of the true conviction that we have lived through an unprecedentedly testing period in human experience. "Modern Places" are the locations that became the frontiers of modernity - cities like Vienna, Moscow, Paris and Berlin, new worlds in the Americas, and a preview of a possible future in Moscow. Did it all happen too fast and go too far? Modernity was like a rollercoaster ride, during which the human race jested with disaster and delighted in the havoc created by the play of g-forces. But despite the dangers that were unleashed along the way, with the clear perspective Peter Conrad provides on a phase of history that has nearly passed, we are much the better prepared to confront the new millennium. By making sense of our immediate past, this book aims to take us forward into the 21st century.
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95% buy the item featured on this page: Modern Times, Modern Places: Life & Art in the 20th Century: Life and Art in the Twentieth Century £14.41 |
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3% buy Cassell's History of English Literature£14.44 |
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2% buy Creation: Artists, Gods & Origins: Artists, Gods and Origins£16.22 |
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