The Vertigo Years by Philipp Blom
Europe, early in the twentieth century: a world adrift, a pulsating era of creativity and contradictions. The hot topics of the day - terrorism and globalisation, immigration, consumerism, the lack of moral values and rivalling superpowers - could make one forget that it is a century ago that this era vanished in the trenches of the Somme, of Ypres, and of Passchendaele. Or did it? The closer one looks, the more this world seems like ours: feminism and quantum thedory, atonal music and democratisation, mass communication and commercial branding, genetics, state-sponsored genocide, colonialism, consumerism and racism, radioactivity and psychoanalysis are all terms first used during this period. This was a time radically unlike the Victorian era that preceded it, a time in which old certainties broke down and many people lost their bearings. At the heart of this vibrant Europe, was a contradiction that would cause its collapse: the new, modern world of mass production, urban life, technological warfare and a rapidly growing working class was still ruled by men - Kaiser Wilhelm, Tsar Nicolas II, and the Austro-Hungarian Emperor Francis Joseph among them - who thought in the chivalric and paternalistic categories of earlier generations, prefering the image of dashing cavalry officers to the prosaic slaughter of the machine gun, and national mythology to political cohesion and democracy. The eventual scope of the catastrophe often obscures the fact that the great cultural divide in Europe's history lies before 1914. This book will bring to life the immediacy of the lives and issues of this fascinating and flawed period.
"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 centuryBut 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
Philipp Blom was born in Hamburg and trained as an historian in Vienna and Oxford. He is the author of 'To Have And To Hold', a history of collectors and collecting and 'Encyclopedia. He writes regularly for journals and newspapers in Europe and the United States. He lives in Vienna.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780297852322 |
| ISBN 10 | 0297852329 |
| Title | The Vertigo Years |
| Author | Philipp Blom |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Orion Publishing Co |
| Year published | 2008-08-28 |
| Number of pages | 480 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |