Modern Times, Modern Places : Life and Art in the Twentieth Century

US: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999. Paperback. Very Good. The world has changed faster during the 20th century than ever before. All our previous assumptions about God, our social, economic and political stru ctures, science and technology, and - by extension - ourselves and our cult ure have been utterly transformed. The 20th century is the century that dar ed to question everything and its progress is told in this tour de force. " Modern Times" are explored through the cultural expressions - in art, in li terature, in music - of the true conviction that we have lived through an u nprecedentedly testing period in human experience. "Modern Places" are the locations that became the frontiers of modernity - cities like Vienna, Mosc ow, Paris and Berlin, new worlds in the Americas, and a preview of a possib le future in Moscow. Did it all happen too fast and go too far? Modernity w as like a rollercoaster ride, during which the human race jested with disas ter 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 centur y.