Modern Times, Modern Places

Life and Art in the 20th Century

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A thoughtful look at art and culture from the turn of the century through to the present

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The world 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 were utterly transformed. The 20th century was 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 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 only recently passed, we are much the better prepared to confront the new millennium. By making sense of our immediate past, this book aims to carry us forward through the 21st century.
Extent: 752 pp
Format: paperback
Publication date: 1999-07-05
Size: 23.5 x 16.8 cm
ISBN: 9780500281512
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Press Reviews

Conrad is stunningly well-informed, compulsively allusive and equipped with the kind of imagination that transforms the base metal of contemporary history into pure gold
Robert McCrum, Observer

A blockbuster of a book, a work which will inspire admiration and wonder … writing with equal assurance about poetry, novels, painting, architecture, film and music
Sunday Telegraph

… a book with everything in it, a fascinating melange, going in all directions at once
Hanif Kureishi, Guardian (Books of the Year)

Tells the story of modern cultural history with unflagging freshness, and without an ounce of surplus stylistic fat
Terry Eagleton, London Review of Books

About the Author

Peter Conrad taught English literature at Christ Church, Oxford, from 1973 to 2011. He has written more than twenty books, including How the World Was Won: The Americanization of Everywhere; Creation: Artists, Gods & Origins; At Home in Australia; and Modern Times, Modern Places: Life and Art in the Twentieth Century, all published by Thames & Hudson.

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