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The Vertigo Years: Change and Culture in the West, 1900-1914 Hardcover – International Edition, September 30, 2008

by Philipp Blom (Author)

47 customer reviews

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The most breathtaking work of history since Paris 1919.

Europe, early in the 20th century: a world adrift, a pulsating era of creativity and contradictions. The hot topics of the day — terrorism and globalization, immigration, consumerism, the lack of moral values, and rivaling superpowers — could make one forget that it is a century ago that this era vanished into the trenches of the Somme and Vimy Ridge.

Or did it? The closer one looks, the more this world seems like ours, the more one sees that the questions and realities shaping our lives and thoughts were formulated and laid down at the beginning of the 20th century: feminism, democratization, mass communication, commercial branding, consumerism, state-sponsored genocide, and psychoanalysis were all concepts birthed in this period. This was a time radically unlike the Victorian era that preceded it, a time in which all the old certainties broke down. Philipp Blom succeeds in bringing to life the immediacy of the lives and issues of this fascinating, flawed pre-war period.

Through a series of historical vignettes, each chapter focusing on one particularly telling event for every year from 1900 to 1914, The Vertigo Years discovers the great people, powers, and ideas of Europe after 1900. The approach is eclectic, brilliantly combining the novelist’s eye with the craft of the historian. It opens up this era in all its contradictions and similarities to our own.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

“A hugely enjoyable and illuminating book…. A work of narrative history at its best.”
— The Guardian

“A stylish, erudite guide to an age of exhilaration and anxiety that in many ways invented our own.”
— Publishers Weekly

“Blom is a superb writer…. [He] succeeds in infusing this outstanding chronicle with drama, compassion, and poignancy.”
— Booklist (starred review)

About the Author

Philipp Blom is a writer, editor, literary translator, broadcaster, and journalist. A former editor of The Harvill Press, he holds a PhD in history from Oxford University. He is the author of four books of fiction and non-fiction. He currently lives in Paris with his wife, writer Victoria Buckley.

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Product details

Hardcover: 480 pages
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart; First Edition edition (September 30, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0771016301
ISBN-13: 978-0771016301
Product Dimensions: 6.3 x 1.3 x 9.3 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 47 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,718,114 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #56900 in Books > History > Europe
- #98467 in Books > History > World

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alan j. greczynski

... has ever wondered about how the tragedy of the Great War (World War One) came about

July 15, 2016

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

If anyone has ever wondered about how the tragedy of the Great War (World War One) came about, this book is a must read. Like Barbara Tuchman's "The Guns of August," and Paul Ham's "1913: The Eve of War," this book in necessary for understanding the roots of this horrific tragedy. The Industrial Revolution opened a new world of wonder and machines that mankind was now developing. Blom describes this perfectly in his Introduction with the young men watching racing cars dashing by them, depicted magnificently on the books jacket cover. Blom's book describes perfectly the problem that has been facing modern man for over a century; our technology is far ahead of our morals and laws. The steamship, the wireless, gasoline engines for automobiles and the rickety aircraft have given man faster transportation and communication. Mankind was going from the horse and carriage to rapid transportation, but the mores were slow to grasp this. Europeans, especially Western Europeans (and Americans) were moving technologically far ahead of the rest of the world. Hilaire Belloc described this best in his poem "The Modern Traveler." Modern weapons are used against "native" peoples, "whatever happens, we have got The Maxim Guns, and they have not." Little did they know they would use these new wonder weapons against fellow Europeans. Blom's book almost gives a year by year reverse countdown from 1900 to 1914, the war catches them by surprise.

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Dale L Landis

An excellent overview of the European social and cultural world in ...

March 11, 2016

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

An excellent overview of the European social and cultural world in the decades leading up to the first world war. If one thinks all was positive and optimistic before the war, which suddenly introduced the more negative worldview of postwar years,then, as a corrective, this book shows also the very dark underside of these years. Existential despair was there before the crisis of 1915. The first chapter stresses how the period excelled at creating a facade covering up dim and threatening realities - there were those (artists for example) who were very capable of peering under this facade to see a degraded humanity. I read this book partly in German and partly in English - both were very well written - both by the author, I assume. I am eager to read his newer book on the inter-war years, now on my "read soon" shelf. This is not primarily about power politics - it is cultural, social, even moral - and I have become convinced that this side of history is of at least equal importance. And it certainly is interesting - as "The Vertigo Years" proves. (The German title literally means "the staggering continent.") If you are interested in the sources of our modern world, to say nothing of a gripping reading experience, read this book.

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October 23, 2011

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Philipp Blom, historiador de la nueva generación alemana y autor de un excelente libro previo, "Encyclopedie", analiza en "Los Años del Vértigo", en forma amena y bien relacionada entre sí, los diferentes factores, orígenes y causas que desembocaron en la guerra de 1917. Una guerra, que nadie fue capaz de predecir pero que se venia gestando desde años antes, particularmente en los países desarrollados de Europa. Leyendo las razones expuestas por el autor, es obvio entender que hubiera sucedido en esos momentos y tal vez, esa es la mejor razón para concentrarse en su lectura: Comprender mejor la historia y las señales para evitar, como en este caso, repetirla.

Los primeros capítulos gozan de una narrativa excelente, en los últimos cambia el estilo y se convierte en un documento menos ameno e interesante, pareciera como si quisiera encontrar rápidamente el final. De todas maneras, en general, es una lectura muy recomendada.

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October 31, 2008

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

`The Vertigo Years: Europe 1900-1914` is Philipp Blom's third non-fiction book. I bought it on the strength of his former two, both of which are fantastic, and I'm happy I did - his ability to write engagingly on just about any time period is demonstrated here in what is probably his strongest book yet. Bloom's central thesis is that, traditionally told, the years leading up to WWI were overshadowed by the war - it was an idyllic "long summertime" of peace, an extension of the assuredly naive 19th century. However Blom reveals just about everything we think of as "modern" was happening before the war, it was a time not of coasting, but of "machines and women, speed and sex," a disintegration of the old world without a clear vision of a new. Like a teenager getting behind the wheel of a car for the first time, it was exciting and dangerous, a cocktail of fundamental social changes converging all at once. Technology of the car, movie, photo and electric light; class relations; women's roles, Freud; Eugenics; colonialism; modern art; cult of "manliness", etc.. all combined to create a fractured new world, where individuals don multiple identities no longer tied to tradition, and an endemic vertiginous exhaustion flourished. Bloom crisscrosses the continent from Russia to England, from the Balkans to Sweden, each page a small feast of ideas, people and events. As a native of Vienna, Bloom commands a deep understanding of central European history in a way I have never seen before, revealing insights and people entirely new to me - it's a true pan-European perspective told with compelling prose.

Like the subject it describes, the book is fractured, moving between ideas, people, events, places and times - but Blom is nothing but orderly in his exposition of how things were related. Freud's theories for instance were mirrored by the political realities of the Austrian culture he lived in. Each chapter has a human interest "frame story" providing a smooth flowing narrative and Ken Burns-like feel for the time. There are ample quotations and fascinating black and white pictures, including a color plate section of modern art. It is a social history not only about the wealthy and intellectual elite, but the attitudes of the general public and zeitgeist of the many. A very long and up to date bibliography and notes section provides a lot more reading.

It's one of the better history books I have read, enhancing my understanding not only of the early 20th century, but its inheritor the present.

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