The Vertigo Years: Europe, 1900-1914 Kindle Edition

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.

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.

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.

`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.